Madonna might be a stand-up comedy virgin - but she wasn't terrible
The Queen of Pop told jokes about dating younger men during her first ever comedy set
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Your support makes all the difference.She is the Queen of reinvention, so it was only a matter of time before Madonna threw off her pop cloak and remodelled herself as a comedian. The music superstar made her stand-up debut on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show last week.
Most first-timers don’t try their first “tight five” in front of 4 million viewers, but most first-timers aren’t Madonna. In fact, she told Fallon, she has always been “a closet comedian”. After three decades filling stadiums, with extravagant and expensive shows, she finds herself, she said, “dreaming of simplicity”. And since there is nothing simpler than a woman and a mic it was down to Fallon to introduce “an up-and-coming comedian from Bay City, Michigan” to the stage.
So was she any good? Not terrible, actually. Stand-up is around 40 per cent confidence, 40 per cent material (the other magic ingredients of timing, funny bones and likeability are harder to measure) and Madonna is not short on the former. She strode on to the stage in big black pants, fishnets, a jacket covered in dollar signs and around a hundred daft medallions.
Despite this get-up, she didn’t resort to hack jokes about her appearance – a favourite fallback of stand-ups seeking easy early laughs. Instead, she ticked a box from the off by declaring she was only going to talk of what she knows.
“I date younger guys” is a great opening gambit for a routine. Sexy, provocative, honest, it was Madonna to a T. An opening story in which she asked her 15-year-old son, Rocco, if he had any single friends showed that she is not afraid to shock or to poke fun at her vampish reputation.
Arguably her subsequent jokes – about the vast number of Warhols she owns and the Picasso that hangs above her fireplace in her “withdrawing room” – were not the easiest to relate to. Even the sympathetic studio audience forgot to laugh. But this is Madonna – if she told jokes about breakfast cereal and her allotment, you’d ask for your money back.
I found it a fascinating insight into an odd life. Compelling, too, to see the Queen of Pop battling nerves and fiddling with the mic. She made the rookie mistake of analysing her performance as she went along – “Well, I crack myself up...” – but her neat pay-off proved she might just have what it takes.
Still, stand-ups aren’t born overnight, not even if they’re called Madonna. Practice makes perfect and the next logical step, surely, is a month cutting her teeth at the Edinburgh Fringe. I’d certainly buy a ticket.
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