No Laughing Matter – Serious Topics Broached at Accents Café Comedy Night

I bought a house for €500,000. Its now worth €250,000 – after 19 years of woking, I now owe quarter of a million if I was to sell it tomorrow. I could have bought gold at its price back then, paid off my mortgage at 2004 prices, and have €2.2 million in the bank now

– Robert Coyle, comedian, touching on topics that are no laughing matter
Robert Coyle at Accents Cafe
Robert Coyle at Accents Cafe

Robert Coyle has quite a stage presence. He does regular gigs at Dublin’s Accents Café. His opening salvo was how he does not like the people who do not like the word fuck and its variants. Amusing indeed, but I prefer the video that does the rounds of the guru outlining how versatile the word is and giving examples.

How to joke on the word fuck, and keep your audience – lose the anger!

Coyle looks something like a cross between Robert Smith of The Cure, and Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Carribean. An animated act that is quite intense, it was enjoyable. After it, I walked into town and passed two homeless men rowing over who could sleep in a doorway in Georges Street, and it showed some folk have even worse problems than folk like Mr Coyle and others struggling with their mortgaes. Of course on Sunday night, a man died on Molesworth Street, being homeless, and these two spring to mind straight away, and I made reference to them on the verse “Christ was Crucified in Dublin” which I wrote on hearing the news.

He touched on a very funny solution to help men control themselves around women, in a quip on the Burqua debate. His is to make ALL wear it, men and women, but print on the women’s pictures of ugly men to keep lads in check! Unknowing, he touched on some relevant information, that originally that is how it was, and only the Taureg today keep the practice, where the men cover up totally too, as much as the women. My own piece – The Woman Behind the Veil – on the burqa debate reflects how make up is as much a mask as any burqua, bar for the opposite effect.

Next on the agenda was the issue of circumcision, and how did the first guy who done it convince the second? Mirthful on hearing, but again, ignorant of facts, and offensive to those who would take their faith seriously. I read somewhere of a problem among the semetic peoples where a signifigant number of males had problems on teenage years of phimosis, and a way to prevent that was mandatory circumcision. Now, a medical speech would not have convinced the people, but a story of a spirit (God) demanding it would be believed. Not credible? Think of the taboo about camping by the river from Traveller folk in Ireland. Silly on the face of it, the spirits may take the children. But when we think of “taking the children”, we must think of children drowning in the river. Tell folk that may happen, they wont listen, but a big bad river spirit taking the children? Move the camp from the river right away, and no children drowning shows the river spirits dont take them when the families dont camp by the river. That is how taboos work.

A series more of jokes came from Coyle, and the second part of the show became a preaching session for the benefots of cannabis. For medicine, I agree. For recreation, I’m lukewarm. Over use can lead to mental health issues, and people with a weakness in that regard can find it brought on, or made worse by repeated use. Though Coyles pointing out its use in developing brains as in under age teenagers that produces the worst effects.

Do catch Coyle there on Saturdays if you are around. Unless you dont like the word fuck.

But for me, the telling part was the opening about the half a million he spent on his house. Ive often heard of, and seen the posts from Direct Democracy and such groups about the gold standard. Im not sure of the accuracy of Coyles claims on the increase of the value of Gold, but if its half of what he says, its time we dumped the fiat currency!

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