It's Not a Runner Bean...: Confessions of a Slightly Successful Comedian by Mark Steel (The Do-Not Press 1996)

Geordie

'This is Mark, he's a comedian,' the man who'd set up the comedy night in Newcastle told his four mates. They looked like the four people you would choose from thousands if you wanted extras for a film set in a Newcastle pub.

'Ar, so yoor the comedian, well ah hoop yoor funna mairt,' they chipped in. We all went to the bar and ordered a round of drinks, and the stockiest among them decided to tell me a joke.

Ay, what do yer chuck a Paki when he's drooning? His wife and kids.' The others laughed.

What to do? Walk away and they'd have just thought I was weird, whereas anything that might have ended in violence was hardly an option.

The tough part of these situations is that when bigotry hides behind a joke, it's so much trickier to deal with. Launching into a tirade about racism would have only made them think, 'What a stuck-up, miserable bastard’. 'All right, it's only a joke,' they'd have said. And gone off muttering, 'He's not much of a comedian.' Besides it was quite possible that he wasn't a serious racist but had never come across the idea that jokes like that are just appalling.

The one thing I decided in the two seconds after he'd finished was that I'd say something. 'What's the matter?' he said, perturbed that I wasn't laughing. 'Doon't yer get it?’

’Na.he's a comadian,' said his mate. 'He's hewered it before.'

There's probably one time in most people's lives when, instead of thinking of the perfect answer the day after the event, it comes out at the time. I don’t remember thinking it but from somewhere came, 'Yeah, I have heard it before. But I heard the funnier version. What do you chuck a Geordie when he's drowning?'

There was another silence and for a moment I was expecting to end up lying on the floor, clutching my ribs, with blood pouring from my nose, mumbling, 'I was only making a point.'

But at the end of this tense three seconds he burst out laughing and said, 'Ya can see wha he's a comadian.'

With any luck he'll now be the Equal Opportunities Officer for the Anglo-Asian Community Relations Department on Tyneside Council.