The Elephant in the Room
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Lee Camp is a revelation, but a slow one for me. It was through the program for the 2010 Worldâs Funniest Island event, sadly cancelled, that I was first aware of Lee. The Laugh Garage Comedy Club's manager, Julie Lawless, was programming the United States of Funny on the Harbour Stage, and Lee was to be among the male comics in the line-up. He was also to feature in the Â¡Sataristas! event, along with Will Durst, Paul Provenza and Rod Quantock, hosted â in order to maximise ticket sales â by a big celebrity comedian equipped to cope with political comedians (one of the Chaser gang, of course). Unfortunately, not even celebrity comedians could help sell tickets, so we missed out on The United States of Funny, Â¡Sataristas! and Worldâs Funniest Island (since it lies in the harbour of the world's most indifferent cityâ¦)

Thankfully Lee â an informed comic whose material is always about stuff, and who contributes to The Onion and The Huffington Post â was keen to head to Australia anyway, with a residency at the Laugh Garage. I spoke to him over the phone while he was in the transit lounge, awaiting his flight to be called, the day he was leaving for Australia.

If, like me, youâre a bit new to Lee, hereâs some of his stuff on the oil spill:


He was also in a recent episode of Provenzaâs The Green Room:

Lee Camp Green Room from Brian Abrams on Vimeo.


And here's our brief chat:



LEE CAMP: I developed writing first. I started writing in high school and then when I first got into college I thought I was going to be a professional humour writer. But during that first year of university, I started thinking a lot about performing and Iâd been kind of âsaving upâ my stand-up writing for a year, so I finally started performing. I had never stepped on a stage before in my life; never been an actor or anything. So I definitely went from writing to performing.

That being said, itâs definitely a different muscle, writing for stand-up rather than for the page. Iâm actually better at writing stand-up than I am at writing regular comedy for the page and I prefer stand-up too. Performing your words has so much more life to it and so much more energy, and obviously the immediate response from the crowd is a different world. So for me personally, writing is the distant runner-up to performing live.

Travelling around the world and getting to see different peopleâs reactions and what different types of people react to is quite a thrill. Travel can be frustrating at times, but in my experience, itâs always worth it.


LEE CAMP: Luckily, because of my politics â Iâve been so unhappy with a lot of what America does around the world â I tend to fit in quite well outside of America. I have the same viewpoint as a lot of the rest of the world. But Iâm only beginning to branch out internationally. I did Montreal many times, but thatâs not that far from New York City. And I recently did the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last summer and really loved it. It was amazing. And this will be my first trip to Australia. But in my experience so far outside of the US, it has been very good to me.

Dom Romeo: Whatâs bringing you to Australia?

LEE CAMP: Initially, I was going to play the Worldâs Funniest Island Festival. That didnât happen but it piqued my interest and got me excited to go. Itâs been a long time coming. Itâs been in the back of my head that I wanted to go to Australia and perform there â comedians I respect from the US have played there and enjoyed it: Jamie Kilstein, Arj Barkerâ¦ a lot of guys who I think are doing cool stuff.


LEE CAMP: Whenever Iâm on stage, Iâm always writing and angling towards getting a laugh. The laugh does come first for me. That being said, if I do have a bit that I have a strong feeling about, and that specific crowd doesnât laugh at it, Iâm not going to abandon it; Iâm going to stick it out because it does have a point. So my feeling is, if youâre not making people laugh, you better have a good reason. You better be saying something pretty important. But at the end of the day, Iâm still a comedian, so my goal is still for the laugh and not just to be a speaker.


LEE CAMP: Well, the United States still has the death penalty and 70% of America agrees with it, so Iâve been doing a long piece on that. I cover a little bit of everything, all the issues of the day: immigration, gay marriageâ¦ Iâve been doing more on the environment, global warming, our incredible ability to continue going down the path that weâre going while it hits us on a day-to-day basis. I do really go all over the map but I like to think that what it all has in common is that theyâre all important issues.

Dom Romeo: Given that youâre funny with a point, that you actually talk about stuff, tell me this: can comedy change anything?

LEE CAMP: Yes. I feel that comedy can inform. I donât know that you can make a comedic argument and have someone leave the room going âokay, now Iâve changed my mindâ. However, comedy can inform people in a way that other things canât because theyâll pay attention. So a lot of my jokes have information in them that a person may just laugh at, but after they leave the room they canât un-know those facts. They leave with new information. Thatâs kind of my goal.

For example, surrounded by jokes in my death penalty piece, is the fact that in equal death penalty cases, the number one determinant is the race of the victim. Basically, our racist system has made it so that if you kill a black person, itâs not a big a deal as if you kill a white person. And so even though someone may disagree with my take on the death penalty, they leave that room and still know that fact. Thatâs where I feel comedy really comes into play â itâs able to get information out there in a novel and interesting way.

Dom Romeo: Imagine that comedy could change everything. Youâve changed everyoneâs minds by performing to them and there were no points left to make â you just have to be funny. What would you do?

LEE CAMP: I think youâre right â I would love to see the day when thereâs nothing left to fix, but I donât think that dayâs coming any time soon. Itâs an excellent question in this sense: if the world was utopia and everything was fixed, and there was no more hardship and pain, I donât know if there would be comedy. Because a lot of comedy comes from pain. Even the stuff that doesnât have a message has some kind of pain or tragedy or hardship behind it. So maybe comedy would be dead if the world was perfect.


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