In the midst of Oxford's annual comedy festival, it feels only right to pay tribute to the greats that came before. Oxford has seen the birth of comedy legends from sketch to stand-up, counting Armando Iannucci, Stewart Lee, Katy Brand and many more amongst its illustrious alums.
And now for the first time, it's all gathered in one spot. The Oxford Comedy Archive, brainchild of local musical comic Jack McMinn, encompasses seventy years of Oxford's funny forebears, featuring freely accessible clips of never-before-seen comedy footage and in-depth interviews with the likes of Rowan Atkinson and Michael Palin. We caught up with Jack to find out more about the Archive and Oxford's contributions to comedy history.
Daily Info: What inspired you to start the Oxford Comedy Archive?
Jack McMinn: I can pinpoint the exact moment to January or February 2023. I was the president of the student troupe The Oxford Revue at the time, and was idly checking their Twitter for something, when I saw that an actor named Jon Dryden Taylor had posted some audio clips from the 1958 Revue show his parents had starred in alongside Dudley Moore. At that moment, I happened to be listening to the Beatles Anthology, which was this big album where they essentially dug up all these old unheard recordings and demos and released them as one project. The Revue recordings and the Anthology project sort of clicked together in my head and I thought ‘Aha’…
Ultimately, the reason I stuck with it for so long is that I feel there is an untold story here. Everyone knows that Oxford has produced some big names in comedy, but newspapers tend to skim over exact details or just get things flat wrong. But if you look into it, there’s a lot to say and discuss and analyse and critique! For better and (often) for worse, Oxford has dictated a lot of British culture, including entertainment, and hopefully, through the Archive, you can begin to see how that happened.
DI: What can people expect to find as they look through the archive?
JM: The Oxford Comedy Archive is a free online record of the past seventy years of Oxford and Oxford-associated comedy, arranged in two separate ways. The ‘exhibit’ pages split everything into time intervals, with interview clips and highlighted historical recordings complimenting a full referenced prose account of what was happening in the world of Oxford comedy and beyond at that time. The ‘library’ contains the entire archive’s contents– all the recordings and complete interviews - in one list. You’re welcome to digest the Archive however you please – the advantage of the website format is that you can read the ‘exhibits’ in whatever order you like, or just skip to the bits you’re interested in!
DI: How has the Oxford comedy scene evolved over the last seventy years?
JM: Hugely! The old revues emblematic of the then-stability of the British empire, the subsequent ‘satire boom’, the rise of Pythonesque humour, the impact of alternative comedy throughout the 1980s, the appearance of Internet comedy in the 2000s – it’s actually very convenient the way you can split up the history in these time intervals. For specifics, you’ll have to read the Archive, I’m afraid! That’s marketing, baby!
DI: You’ve interviewed some comedy legends directly for this archive, like Rowan Atkinson and Michael Palin, to name a few - what’s been the most interesting/surprising experience you’ve had in curating these one-on-ones?
JM: The Rowan Atkinson one was probably up there, given that it was so unexpected. I didn’t initially think to ask him for an interview, given his stardom, so I was actually contacting his agent about another figure they represented. Then I threw the question out there and suddenly it all came together! That was the only interview I had to do by phonecall – I recorded the whole thing through my mobile into my laptop, and had to muck around with it in Audacity to clean up the audio as much as possible (I’ve written up a full transcript just in case). But it was worth it, if only to drag the Daily Information into the narrative – one scoop of the Archive is that Rowan met Richard Curtis via a featured ad in this very publication.
There were plenty of folks I wish I could have gotten the chance to chat to, so I do have vague plans for a ‘Phase 2’ – to properly include all the bits and pieces that never came together in the end for whatever reason. The Oxford Imps (the university improv troupe) are also due a proper historical retrospective…
DI: How does Oxford’s comedy history mirror that of British comedy in general? More importantly, perhaps, how does it differ?
JM: The most prominent connections between Oxford and British comedy relate to class structure. Class informs so much of British society and pressures, and that’s probably why so many jokes in British comedy are based around the subject. Oxford University has been a hive of sniffy upper class folks for hundreds of years, but all the biggest comedic leaps during the 1950s and 1960s seem to occur when people from a working-class background get access to that space and then parody it on the stage. That place of frustration led to the ‘satire boom’ – Beyond The Fringe, Private Eye, That was the Week That Was. Then by the time you reach 1980s ‘alternative comedy’, led by working-class comedians outside of Oxford, you end up with a generation of Oxford student comedians utterly enamoured with alt aesthetics and humour, but that can never properly participate on account of them attending Oxford University. It’s very 'Common People'.
It’s important that things like class get dissected in projects like the Archive, because I think there’s a trend with documentaries these days – particularly those which involve celebrities – to just gloss over murkier or more complex aspects. They just end up being a string of famous people, arranged in no particular order, talking about how great a particular thing was, and that’s boring as hell! I wanted the Archive to have a thesis, a structure, an actual perspective and point being made throughout – that’s how you learn something. I also hope that delving into these topics saves the Archive from being a ‘things were so fantastic in the old days before comedy got woke’ ordeal, cos that’s a dull take and also a flat-out lie in my opinion!
DI: You’re a musical comedian yourself; has your research influenced your own approach to comedy?
JM: Kind of? It’s mainly just been reassuring to meet those who came before me – Howard Goodall, Philip Pope and the cabaret duo Frisky and Mannish are all interviewed for the archive, and they all have found a really lovely balance between making musical comedy that both is funny and works as a composition. In terms of my research influencing my comedy, it’s difficult to say while I’m still in the depths of doing it, to be honest - I’ll let you know if I notice anything!
DI: When will the website be launching?
JM: 18th July! It will be accessible everywhere in the UK at www.oxfordcomedyarchive.com (not available in any other country, sadly – worldwide licensing is expensive!) but there is an official launch party that same day at ‘Live and Peculiar – The Aestival Festival’. It’s a comedy cabaret evening hosted by Absana Rutherford (another former Revue member) and me at the Jericho Tavern – we have critically acclaimed stand-up, live music, art, even a bit of burlesque! Tickets are on sale now - but they’re selling quick!
DI: Finally, describe the Oxford Comedy Archive in five words!
JM: Oh Christ. Right, here goes -