Basket.

I had the dubious fortune tonight of attending a function that included a performance by a well-known local... (I hesitate to use the word) comedian. I won't say which one, because that could get me sued, and that would really be a spot of bother.

Anyway, it was half-an-hour long and supposedly cost $3,000 - which I will point out, is the amount I make in an entire school term of bending 150 teenagers to my will, tasked with ensuring they get a proper education, getting headaches over whether they are getting a proper education and thinking of all the various ways I can help them get a proper education. Five days a week, at least 5.5 hours every day, for ten weeks, not counting all the marking I did in my own time - and this guy makes the exact same amount in half-an-hour of being unfunny.

Not that I expected otherwise. Predictably, he opened with sly digs at "the old man" *wink wink*; OH SHIT YOU ARE MAKING AN OBLIQUE REFERENCE TO LEE KUAN YEW. THAT IS SO, LIKE, COMPLETELY SUBVERSIVE WHAT IF THEY ARREST YOU AND STRIP YOU NAKED AND THEN DIRECT POWERFUL AIR-CONDITIONERS UPON YOUR BARE BODY, RIGHT EVERYONE? PLEASE TO BE LAUGHING, A FUNNY WAS MADE.

Yup, scintillating material so far. It would get better, naturally... because, with monotone regularity, the next issue on the comedic agenda was RACE.

Yes, let us make race jokes because it is so EDGY and some more I am Indian therefore if I joke about Indians the irony will immediately make everyone split their sides. This is such original material, I mean making light of race issues in Singapore? Sure, never been done. EDGY EDGY EGDY.

And then we get to the good stuff: sex, of course. This is where he actually did have a genuine chance to shine, but sadly his idea of being funny was to rehash really old jokes which I had all heard before I was fifteen. Say what you want about my personal morality, but honestly - $3000 to hear, again, about the old man who died because he fucked his wife according to the rhythm of the church bells and one day an ice-cream van came along?

But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part is that most of the audience actually found him funny. Or at least they seemed to, because they actually laughed. I didn't raise a chuckle all night, personally. I barely cracked a smile. But what can we conclude from this phenomenon? Personally, it leads me to two conclusions: either Singaporeans are really polite, or they are really stupid. And since I can safely rule out the former possibility, because fucking hell, Singaporeans are certainly not by any measure polite, the conclusion I have to come to is that Singaporeans are stupid. City of the arts? With local "talent" of this sort and a populace who can't move beyond basic toilet humour and "sly" (read: fucking dated) political digs, our city is as much a city of the arts as the Fata Morgana is a city.

Comedy is difficult. Part of its difficulty is originality and unpredictability. If you can surprise an audience, you can make them laugh. If you manage to surprise and amuse an audience with utterly predictable material like sex, politics and race, then they are Singaporeans and are getting no better than they deserve.

One good thing did come of it, I suppose. I got a chance to see up close how completely pathetic Singaporean "comedy" is. The British are leagues ahead and the Americans can do slapstick a lot better. Come to think of it, Asian humour is pretty shitty in general. I've yet to hear a Chinese joke not based upon wordplay, for instance, and no Asian comic possesses the reach or sheer comedic value of Borat or Blackadder. The latter is particularly impressive - because it isn't slapstick and is low-budget. Watch Blackadder and you will notice how cheapskate the sets look. But the scripting, comedic timing and delivery are impeccable. Borat, on the other hand, is the epitome of slapstick. That is true comedy, not a a fucking rip-off boderline scam $3000 robbery playing to an audience that wouldn't know funny from a hole in the ground.