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Comedy Culture

Stand-ups get down and dirtier

MIKE WILMOT to Sunday (February 19) and DARREN FROST Wednesday (February 22) to February 25, both at Yuk Yuk’s (224 Richmond West), Wednesday-Thursday and Sunday 8 pm, Friday 9 pm, Saturday 8 and 10:30 pm. $11.50-$19.50. 416-967-6431.

A couple of weeks ago outside Yuk Yuk’s flagship Toronto comedy club, a sign warned us that “due to the explicit themes represented in tonight’s show, we have no choice but to deem it XXX-rated. No whining. NO REFUNDS. You have been warned.”

Headliner JJ Liberman more than lived up to that XXX label, but I didn’t see anyone leave.

Liberman, one of the most fiercely talented new comics around, looks like some loud-mouthed straight bro but happens to sleep both with women and dudes.

One of his raunchiest bits includes a joke about wanting to go down on a woman but only after a guy’s ejaculated in her. He’s not gonna eat an empty cannoli, he says, getting a mixture of groans and laughs from the incongruous image.

“I’m learning to speak the truth but to follow up with something funny,” says Liberman, who just came back from a week in Las Vegas, where he played, among other gigs, the legendary Dirty At 12:30 show at the Southpoint.

“So, yeah, that’s shocking to hear, which is why I have the cannoli line right after – to break the tension.”

That XXX disclaimer might as well stay up at Yuk’s, because two of the country’s filthiest comics are headlining there this month: Mike Wilmot, who, along with Kenny Robinson, is one of our original dirty comics, and Darren Frost, who a generation later made his mark getting those oh-no-he-didn’t-just-say-that laughs.

“There’s always been edgy, dirty comedy, but I don’t think it’s had mass appeal until recently,” says Frost. “In Canada we’re a little slow to catch up, but in the U.S., if you look at a lot of the comics people are loving and going to see en masse, they’re all dirty, from Louis C.K. and Bill Burr to Jim Jefferies and Amy Schumer (who performs at the ACC this week).”

Wilmot says the internet has changed our expectations.

“Everything’s right at your fingertips and can be so outrageous,” says Wilmot. “So a filthy comic is nothing these days.”

Wilmot, who regularly works in the UK (next month he plays the prestigious Royal Albert Hall), says it’s hard to upset people there unless you’re unfunny.

“Try to offend someone in Edinburgh and you’ll get a rave review,” he says. “This guy Kim Noble jerked off into a cup and got five-star reviews. I saw an act called Naked Lesbian Acrobat in which a performer peed into a glass from 20 feet in the air.”

Wilmot’s raunchy uncle persona, by comparison, might seem tame. But he’s been doing his honking, balls-out delivery for decades and shows no signs of stopping. If anything, he’s ramped it up.

“Being in your 50s is a wonderful licence,” he says. “You don’t need anyone’s blessing, an agent’s or manager’s. You don’t give a fuck about producers. You do your own thing and let people come to you. And that seems to have worked.”

Still, as Frost points out, if an audience member doesn’t like your dirty comedy, you’ll probably hear about it.

“There’s an 80/20 rule when it comes to comedy: 80 per cent will love it and 20 per cent won’t. But the 20 per cent who don’t like a clean comic will just walk away. The 20 per cent who don’t like a dirty comic, however, will do whatever they have to do to stop it.”

Frost, who has one joke that imagines one of his young sons being molested and a hoarding bit involving his cum, has killed at comedy clubs that never ask him back. Even Just For Laughs, which booked him in its Nasty Show in 2005, hasn’t called again. (The poster for his latest show, Happy Thoughts, which features an image of him blowing out his brains, has a grinning JFL mascot in the top right-hand corner.)

Frost used to book commercials – Listerine, Cash for Life, Bell – but that’s dried up because casting directors Google him and see his blue jokes.

“I still get work in TV and cartoons, but in commercials you’re tied to a product. And companies don’t want to get an email that reads ‘Dear Pfizer, your mascot called me a cunt onstage.'”

At one point the c-word was a no-no in comedy clubs, but lots of comics – including many women – have reclaimed it. Wilmot had a whole routine about it years ago and has a new joke connecting it to quitting smoking.

“In Ireland a cunt is a term of endearment, but here in Canada people can still get their hackles up a bit,” he says. “I like having words out there that you’re not supposed to say in polite society. But as they say, words are fine and actions are evil. People who give words too much weight are asking for it.”

So is anything out of bounds? Rape jokes, for instance?

“They’ve always been controversial,” says Liberman, “and I understand that there are bad rape jokes where you’re making the victim the punchline. But I’m totally against censoring them, because if you take away rape jokes, what’s next?”

Some audiences have criticized Frost’s joke about his prepubescent boy being abused.

“They go, ‘I can’t hear this!’ But you know what? It talks about my real fear. Every parent has this fear.”

If blue comics do anything, they’re saying what many people think or fear but are scared to voice.

“When there’s a real connection in the room, I’m talking to someone’s inner self, the place where you keep all your secrets locked up,” says Wilmot. “And when you laugh it’s healing.”

glenns@nowtoronto.com | @glennsumi

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