When Lost Voice Guy opens his new show with Channel 4’s Paralympics promo vid, you’re just waiting for the withering put down. And sure enough, with an outburst from his iPad speech synthesizer, he demolishes this parade of “yes, I can!” superhumans. Lost Voice Guy does not want to be one of your “inspirational” disabled people, he’s OK being a useless lazy arse like the rest of us.
Very rarely do you get to revel in un-PC comedy these days. It’s assumed to mean laughing at someone, victimising a minority. But there’s a savage, cathartic beauty about bringing the unsayable into the comedy sphere, and for those who enjoy a dash of inappropriateness for that reason, Lost Voice Guy is your go-to. He “goes there” in a way other people can’t.
Witness his talk of being sent to a neo-Nazi death camp, or his themed game show Play Your Crips Right, in which the audience has to guess who’s the most disabled. Utterly unspeakable, but utterly hilarious. (Obviously he can’t have known how topical the game show would become with the sad news of Bruce Forsyth’s death yesterday, but he’s programmed in a quick salute to Brucie which is a nice touch.) He also has an absolutely brutal line about how he might look to a prospective Tinder date, which blows other comics’ “people say I look like [insert mildly disparaging remark here]” out of the water.
He’s completely scathing of Facebook memes preaching positivity. All the positive thinking in the world is not going to cure disability, and he takes a few of the aforementioned memes apart to illustrate the point. There’s also some cheeky examples of notes he’s left in hotel rooms to mess with the cleaner’s heads.
Minor issues? He spends a little too long on a story about the girl of his dreams, which suggests a climax it doesn’t quite reach, and there’s a few bits of recycled material fans may recognise, but nothing you can’t enjoy hearing again.
Really it’s a good job everything’s pre-programmed too, because he’s continually corpsing. Freed of the need to keep a straight face to deliver the gags, you can see the smile cracking on his face when he knows there’s a good one coming – infectious, and the laughter keeps rolling.
There is of course an important point he’s making here in and amongst the humour – society divvies up disabled people into the inspirational and the scrounging, and can’t accept a disabled person as an average joe or jane. It’s also worth another reminder about Tory treatment of those with disabilities. But while making those essential points, Lost Voice Guy always puts his wicked humour first. He might not be a superhuman, but he’s a bloody good comedian.