Pat Condell

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Pat Condell
Condell in January 2006.
Condell in January 2006.
Birth name Patrick Condell
Born November 1, 1951 (1951-11-01) (age 56)
England
Medium Stand-up
Nationality English
Years active 1980s - present
Genres Topical comedy/satire
Subject(s) Religion, religious satire
Website PatCondell.net

Pat Condell (born November 1, 1951) is an English stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality. An outspoken atheist, Condell hosts a series of widely-viewed short video monologues denouncing religion.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Pat Condell was raised as a Catholic but was educated in several different Church of England schools across South London. Allegedly, his father was a compulsive gambler working in a betting shop until he died of leukaemia.[1] The family was impoverished, moving repeatedly from one rented flat to another.[2] Condell is a vegetarian. Condell's website states that he became a vegetarian in 1976 after watching a deer being butchered.[3]

[edit] Online videos

Condell has posted forty-one monologues so far on various video sites, which together have notched up over 15 million hits.[4][5][6][7] He is in the top hundred most subscribed-to users on YouTube[8], and in the top ten most subscribed to users of all time in the UK.[9]He is the most subscribed to UK comedian on YouTube.[10]

Condell received criticism after links to his monologue, titled The Trouble With Islam were circulated to commissioners in the City of Berkeley's Peace and Justice Commission. Condell said in the video that he thought Islam was "a religion of war", that women who cover up their face on their own free will were "mentally ill", and that fundamentalist Muslims were "primitive pigs whose only achievement in life is to be born with a penis in one hand and a Qur'an in the other." Commissioner Elliot Cohen described Condell's comments as "insulting, degenerating and racist".[11] Condell then accused Cohen of being "motivated by his own narrow personal and political agenda which has nothing to do with me or the video clip."[12] The video was initially sent to them by fellow Peace and Justice Commissioner Jonathan Wornick, who said it "tries to expose intolerance in the Muslim world," such as "the intolerance of radical Islamists who say if you insult Allah, you should have your head cut off."[13] The Trouble With Islam has since notched up over two million hits on the world wide web. Condell said that its popularity proves "there is an enthusiastic audience for comedy ideas and opinions which are routinely censored out of existence in the UK’s mainstream media, thanks to misguided political correctness".[14] He has also posted videos criticising Christianity[15], Catholicism[16], Judaism[17], The Church of England[18] and Scientology[19].

Born an Irish Catholic, but educated in Church of England schools, he said of this time "I found myself segregated in assembly and shunted into another room while everyone said their morning prayers. I didn’t mind. The whole pantomime seemed hollow to me even then. Once you become aware of the gulf between what people profess to believe and how they actually behave, it’s hard to take any of it seriously."[1]

He has been criticised by Christian author Dinesh D'Souza on AOL News, who said "If the televangelists are guilty of producing some simple-minded, self-righteous Christians, then the atheist authors are guilty of producing self-congratulatory buffoons like Condell."[20] Atheist biology professor and blogger PZ Myers, on the other hand, endorsed Condell with a terse "Speak it, brother!".[21]

In 2007 one of Condell's YouTube videos was used in a presentation by Sir Harold Kroto, recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, at the Beyond Belief symposium. In the clip Condell had some fun "trying" to find something good to say about the three major world religions. After showing the clip, to the general amusement of the audience, Sir Harold remarked, "Look, he's got 28 up on there. Go and see him...if he's still alive."[22]

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion said of Condell that "Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he is on our side". In 2008, Dawkins' website released a collection of Condell's monologues on DVD, titled Pat Condell: Anthology.[23]

He is also a member of the National Secular Society[24] and has a large following of users on the Internet, including a Facebook Fanclub dedicated to him.[25]

[edit] Comedy

Pat Condell performing a stand up gig at Brunel University in 1989.
Pat Condell performing a stand up gig at Brunel University in 1989.

After a number of jobs, including six years logging in Canada, Condell "fell into comedy" in the 1980's. His first stage performance was at the age of thirty two in a comedy sketch show Mountbatten's Plimsoll. Also a poet at the time, he appeared at the Poetry Olympics at the Young Vic Theatre in 1982. This led for a short while to writing weekly topical poems for Time Out magazine.

His first stand up comedy performance was in 1985. He then performed on the London Alternative Comedy circuit for several years (originally under the name Eddie Zibin).[26] "In those days" he said "some of the nights were wild, particularly at the old Tunnel Club, next to the Blackwall Tunnel, where the audience was a nightmare. I had bottles and glasses thrown at me, and one guy even jumped on stage with a pair of shears and tried to cut the mic lead." He was a performer in the Cutting Edge team at The Comedy Store,[1]with whom he performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1991. [27] In 1991 Condell was the winner of a Time Out Comedy Award. [28] From 1991 to 1994 he was a regular panelist on BBC Radio 1's "Loose Talk". [29] [30] By the mid 1990's he was sick of the late nights and travelling, as he was by then regularly notching up 200 to 300 gigs a year around Britain, and he started writing for others, whilst still doing the occasional live gig. [1]

His 2006 stand-up show ‘Faith Hope and Sanity’, subtitled ‘A Few Jokes About Religion Before It Kills Us All’, was a platform for his comedy and atheist beliefs. "This is the first time I’ve set out to write a show in order to say something, rather than just as a vehicle for stand-up" he said of the show. "It seems to me that fundamentalist Christians, jihadist Muslims and settlement-building Jews are causing more than their share of trouble in the world. World events are being driven by people with apocalyptic delusions, while here in Britain a paralysing liberal guilt allows religious bigots to use intimidation and violence to stamp out free speech. If you can’t get laughs out of all that, you can’t get them out of anything." [1] The show did not go down well with one reviewer on the Chortle website, who said of Condell "when you joke about religion, you’re judged against the very best there is. And, disappointingly, Condell is not quite up to the job...a later incarnation of the show could yet inspire. At the moment, though, Condell is still going through the motions."[31]

He is also author of the play Barry Sorts It Out[32] This play was described in the Financial Times as "a sordid East End comedy written by stand-up Pat Condell. It repeats ad nauseam the same gag, in which Barry's narrative recounts his calm, reasonable thoughts followed with a "so I..." by his crassly Neanderthal actions."[33]

He did comedy sketches at Duke of York's Theatre, which was released onto DVD as Barf Bites Back! (1991).[34]

Condell has said of his humour "I used to talk about this stuff in comedy clubs until I discovered internet video. Now I get a lot more death threats, but I don't have to deal with drunks."[35]

[edit] Works

  • Barry Sorts It Out.[36]
  • Stand and Deliver (writer)[37]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e Hay, Malcolm (2006-11-03). Pat Condell: interview. Time Out London. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  2. ^ Cutting Edge at the Gilded Balloon.
  3. ^ Godless and Meatless
  4. ^ Comedian Pat Condell’s videos receive millions of hits. National Secular Society. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  5. ^ Pat Condell's Live Leak page. Live Leak. Retrieved on 2007-12-04.
  6. ^ Pat Condell's YouTube page. YouTube. Retrieved on 2008-03-02.
  7. ^ dotSub most viewed videos. dotSub. Retrieved on 2007-12-04.
  8. ^ Most Subscribed : (All Time). YouTube (21 January 2008). Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
  9. ^ All - Most Subscribed (All Time). YouTube (2008-04-17). Retrieved on 2008-04-17.
  10. ^ Comedians - Most Subscribed (All Time). YouTube. Retrieved on 2008-06-05.
  11. ^ Comic in US 'hate speech' row. Chortle (2007-05-17). Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  12. ^ Letters to the Editor. Berkeley Daily Planet (2007-05-29). Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  13. ^ Scherr, Judith (2007-05-15). Commissioners Condemn Bigoted E-Mail. Berkeley Daily Planet. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  14. ^ Condell hits top a million. The Freethinker. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  15. ^ Condell, Pat. Hello angry Christians. YouTube. Retrieved on 2008-06-05.
  16. ^ Condell, Pat. Catholic Morality. YouTube. Retrieved on 2008-05-28.
  17. ^ Condell, Pat. What about the Jews?. YouTube. Retrieved on 2008-05-28.
  18. ^ Condell, Pat. Sharia Fiasco. YouTube. Retrieved on 2008-05-28.
  19. ^ Condell, Pat. Take a cruise, Tom. YouTube. Retrieved on 2008-05-28.
  20. ^ D'Souza, Dinesh (2007-09-26). Why Is This Atheist So Smug?. AOL News. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  21. ^ Myers, PZ (2007-11-28). Speak it, Brother!. Scienceblogs. Retrieved on 2007-11-29.
  22. ^ Nobel prize winner gives Pat Condell a shoutout (at 3:00)
  23. ^ Pat Condell Anthology. richarddawkins.net (2008). Retrieved on 2008-05-10.
  24. ^ Comedian Pat Condell’s videos receive millions of hits. NationalSecularSociety.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-29.
  25. ^ http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2007/08/comedian-pat-condell-ranting-about.html
  26. ^ Condell, Pat. Comedy and Me. Pat Condell. Retrieved on 2008-05-28.
  27. ^ Cutting Edge at the Gilded Balloon.
  28. ^ Time Out Awards. Chortle. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  29. ^ Loose Talk.
  30. ^ Loose Talk.
  31. ^ Bennett, Steve (2006-11-08). Faith, Hope & Sanity Review. Chortle. Retrieved on 2008-02-03.
  32. ^ Pat Condell - playwright. doollee.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-03.
  33. ^ Shuttleworth, Ian. THE PICK OF LONDON'S SECOND ONE-PERSON PLAY FESTIVAL. Financial Times. Retrieved on 2008-02-04.
  34. ^ Amazon.co.uk: Barf Bites Back! [1991]: Tony Slattery,Simon Fanshawe,Eddie Izzard,Pat Condell,Lee Evan: Video
  35. ^ Pat Condell. goofigure. Retrieved on 2008-05-28.
  36. ^ Pat Condell - playwright. doollee.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-03.
  37. ^ Pat Condell

[edit] External links

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