Comedy: Blue is the colour

Canadian comedian Mike Wilmot has braved a PC backlash to bring his `bright blue' act to town

If I tell you that about the most printable joke from Mike Wilmot's act is "My girlfriend and I were making love the other night, we were about halfway through, around the 12-second mark", then you'll get the idea. This Canadian comedian is the bluest thing this side of the Mediterranean. Imagine Roy "Chubby" Brown with a north America accent and multiply it by five, and you're some way to appreciating the scale of Wilmot's rudeness.

Surfing the anti-PC wave of the moment, he gleefully describes his humour as "bright blue. I get off talking dirty. The more people tell me `you're never going to get on TV', the more I do it. I like the concept of the nightclub entertainer, before all the clubs turn into birthday-party rooms. I like the smell of burning candles."

For his part, Wilmot can't see what all the fuss is about. He certainly has enough charm to skate over his more questionable material. "I don't find myself that dirty," he claims. "What's so dirty about a guy trying to hump his wife? All those rules were broken years ago; everyone else has to catch up now. Teenagers and old people come up to me and say `Did you have a camera in my room?' Watching my show, people realise they're not freaks."

Wilmot reckons that audiences relate to his act because "everyone has sex or is affected by it. My act is just a warped vision of it. All men want to believe they are macho, magnificent lovers, and all women want to believe they know everything about sex and all the problems are their husbands' fault. They need me to cut the crap and tell them that neither sex knows what the hell's going on. If an orgasm happens, it's nothing to do with us; we were just lucky."

For all that, Wilmot has felt the whip of the PC backlash. "I get complaints sometimes, but everybody does. I got banned from a university in Canada, because the woman running the student government didn't get one of my jokes. The ribbon-wearing people are perpetually offended. When you're advertised as a triple-X show, you draw them in. But the last thing I want to do is become famous for annoying women's groups or because men are told not to watch me by their wives. My act is not nasty. There is no hate - which is what drives a lot of blue acts. Comedy is about striking a chord. If it's true, then it can't be offensive."

One by-product of his show, Wilmot contends, is that it gets his audiences in the mood. "Everyone humps after seeing me," he maintains (though quite how he knows that is not explained). "If I keep going long enough, I'm going to end up entertaining children who were conceived after one of my shows. I'll have generations of followers."

Mike Wilmot plays Big Fish, Richmond (0181-355 7387) tomorrow; Ha Bloody Ha at Ealing Town Hall (0181-566 4067) Tue; Jongleurs Battersea (0171-564 2500) Wed

EXTRA

To some, Page 3 stunna Gayle Tuesday may be a one-joke wonder, but she sustains the joke better than most. She brings her inimitable insights into the world of tabloid showbiz to The Palace Watford (01582 560222) tomorrow