A Black Country Night Out

Britain is so weird. I don't mean Page 3 or the inexplicable rise of Paddy McGuinness, but specifically that it's a tiny country with no two places you couldn't drive between in a day, yet inside its imaginary borders, a vast variation of accents, language, and culture. Look at that response-farming meme which crops up on the socials every other week, asking 'where you're from, what do you call this?' under a picture of a bread roll. Or bap. Or cob. Or Davro buttock. Scousers, Brummies, Mancs, Scots, Essex Girls/Lads. Dozens of little enclaves, where everyone's exactly the same as the people from the other ones, yet also different, in the way they say their vowels or describe the small doughy product you'd shove a burger in. Or what they laugh at.

I always felt removed from regional tribalism. What is a Sussex accent? I speak it, but it's nothing you'd ever hear as an impression. We don't even have any good regional slang. There's a place called Dogshit Alley, does that count? Perhaps we're too far south to cultivate much of a specific identity, as local pride gets more intense the further north you go (note: London is the North), with constant talk about 'Northern hospitality' that you'd never hear from an inhospitable Southerner. Most fascinating to me in these self-contained pockets of culture is the comedy. As a kid, my entire knowledge of Wales came from the covers of mum's Max Boyce LPs, him clad in a rugby shirt and brandishing an enormous leek. In my mid-teens, I went on a coach holiday to Scotland, with long highland drives soundtracked by the albums of Irish comic Hal Roach, driver laughing along to jokes he'd been listening to weekly for years. “Write it down,” Hal would advise after every gag, “it's a good one!”

Hal never rang the doorbell on Noel's House Party, but had a successful career of packed houses all the same, holding the world record for longest running engagement at a single venue, with 26 years at a Dublin hotel. This brings us to A Black Country Night Out, a mere sample of a live show which ran for over twenty years. Beginning in 1971 as a charity night in the Robin Hood pub, its roster of local comics, folk singers and spoon players even toured Spain and Vancouver, releasing a number of live albums, and eventually, this VHS. Though 'Black Country' is the kind of thing Farage cries out while tossing and turning in a nightmare, it refers to an area of the West Midlands, taking in places like Dudley and wherever the Peaky Blinders are walking round in slow-motion.

The pub comedy equivalent of Boyhood, opening titles inform us this was filmed at the Swan Theatre Midlands on 8th April 1982 and the Grand Theatre Wolverhampton 8th March 1992. There's a strong sense it was sold out of car boots by men who cum real ale, and the British equivalent of those American Blue Collar Comedy tours – “you might be a redneck if...” But quickly it will become clear that, as someone who can see France if the weather's right, I'm an outsider here. I don't even speak the language. We open on the night's performers lined up for a folk song; “If you're friendly and true, you're welcome to stay, to sup and to drink any time of the day.” I'm not particularly friendly, so you may have to have me removed. Judging by the next line, they'd have no trouble dragging me out – “strong in the arm and strong in the head, Black Country born and Black Country bred.” Settle down, tough guy! The song segues into an introduction for each act – “from Jon and young Tom, a message we giveth...” It's like the bloody Wu-Tang Clan! Given the ages of the participants, every one of them is now dead.

The show is “a mixture of Black Country songs and humour,” and a perfect example of things solely powered by regional pride. There's nobody like us Black Country folk; we've got our own rules, our own language! First act Tommy Mundon's introduction is a lesson in itself. “He's a railien(?), or he's a boster, meaning he's a good 'un.” I can't speak to his goodness, but Mundon's certainly a weird 'un. Long-limbed with a small head, he's like Slenderman cosplaying as Mr. Rogers. “Halesowen police are looking for a tall handsome man for raping women. If the money's good, I might apply for the job myself!” This is an uncharacteristically tart opener, as Mundon's otherwise toothless and family friendly, in classic The Comedians definition of a stand-up, reeling off jokes everyone knows. His philosophy of “the little gags that don't tax the brain always go down the best” is proven by doing the old Two Ronnies 'stolen toilets/the police have nothing to go on'.

He's an energetic stage presence, leaping up and down, arms windmilling, gob agape like the Mouth of Sauron and literally buckled at every punchline. He does earn it, with my old favourite about the man who's regular as clockwork, half-six every morning – “trouble is, I don't get up until nine!” Our next act has a unique talent of “conjuring very beautiful words from the complex dialect of the Black Country.” It is of course the Bard of the Black Country, Harry Harrison. Anyone taking a pound every time they say Black Country will be out-earning Musk within the hour.

Harrison's your note-perfect 1982 man in his sixties. Flat cap, beige Sunday best, trousers hitched so high, if you opened his flies you'd be greeted by his navel. I can understand maybe half of what he says, accent turning it into a Rowley Birkin sketch. Something about putting a dog's tail in a mangle? Harrison's one of those whose entire personality is 'I am from a place', and cranks up the regionalness to max volume. Shopping's for nancy-boy Southerners; proper Black Country folk go “shapping” in those new-fangled supermarkets. Evidently, even in 1982, this is such a new experience in the BC, it requires a poem about shin-pads for the “dodgem games” with trolleys and L plates on the baskets. “These supermarkets, them like motorways, with a need for speed on shapping days.” The audience are silent throughout.

Next is a man originally from Wales (a filthy outsider!), folk singer Jon Raven. Great opener, asking the men in attendence if they ever considered getting rid of their wives, cos in the good old days, you could just tie a brick round her neck and chuck her in the canal, or put her up for auction.

His song Wife for Sale invites us to imagine “you're in Bilston, and the year, 1827.” I'll try my best! These are sing-a-longs, though his cue of “it's ding-a-dong ding-a-dong ooh arr ooh arr – all together!” precedes a gander at the miserable looking audience, reserved and mumbling, decidedly not doing it all together. One absolutely superb cut shows a very serious older gentleman joining in with all the vigour of a Richard Dawkins 'amen' when his family say grace at Christmas dinner.

“At two o'clock certain, the sale begin, so yow as want splicin', be there with your tin!” You fuckin' wot, mate? The next act is so unique, her (not his like you were thinking, Andrew Tate) introduction asks “how often do you find a stand-up comedienne?” Queen of Black Country Comedy, Dolly Allen is wearing black gloves, a handbag, and a hat with a great big turkey feather and plastic poppy. She'd have been 76 here, and working as a comic since the 1950s, fiddling with the pockets of her cardie, disconcertingly staring off at a single point in the audience, unblinking. She's got a more modern, storytelling style; at least I think she does, as a simple Southern boy like me can't understand what she's saying either. I do pick out jokes about vacuum cleaners and a husband who puts his work boots in the oven, before a very earnest, acapella rendition of You Need Hands, which is both quite sweet, and very 'gran's had a sherry', hat coming off at the final word to signal applause. When Allen died in 1990, a blue plaque was installed in her honour at Brierley Hill Civic Hall.

Visually, Brian Clift can be added to the long list of Sutcliffes, thickly bearded, and with strings poking out of his guitar like unkempt pubes. He's big into community spirit, hard times and good neighbours, specifically, “the lady in question was my old gran (starts singing), her was the salt of the earth, so folks used to say.” Literally just a song about his gran, it's sadly lacking observational comedy about farts or racism. “Her was one of the owd sort, her had a heart of gold, and brought up we kids, just to do what we was told...” Yeah, well my gran hated Mr. Fuji from the WWF because he was Japanese, so write a song about that! Old Clift's gran helped a “wench” down the street who was having a baby, fetching “hot wetter and towels,” and mate just speak properly! Stop mispronouncing stuff to sound interesting! The song ends on a downbeat note, opining that times – in 1982 – have changed, and “where am them now?” You're just taking the piss now, Brian.

Big closer sees the cast singing It's a Long Way to Tipperary for some reason. The whole thing feels like a joke I'm not in on, but then it's not meant for me (let alone a me over four decades in the future, when everyone in that building is bones). Credits for the 1982 section reveal it originally aired on BBC Midlands. As we move into the 1992 half, all sound comes from the in-built mic of the camcorder, filming from up on a tripod far away, leaving me to contend with fuzzy voices reverbing round the theatre as well as accents. Our host opens with the old staple “you can't see shit up in the balcony!” which gets a massive laugh from an incredibly rowdy crowd, primed to piss themselves. Lucky for them, Mundon's back! Times have certainly changed in the intervening decade, as he's throwing around the bloodys, and even a punchline about urine. Thank goodness Dolly's not alive to see this!

The glasses hanging round his neck swing to and fro with his gesticulations, as he asks for no photos during his act for security reasons – “social security reasons.” Good gag. The glasses go on, inferring he needs them cos of too much fiddling with his penis; “it's my initials, TW Mundon, Thomas Wanker,” forcing you to imagine him flailing about, long limbs thrashing, maw open, room left like the end of Bugsy Malone. But he is absolutely storming it, inciting chaotic laughs one feels would go on forever if he didn't interrupt them with another joke. Anyone hearing the sound of the audience would assume he was the funniest man alive; every gag bridged by fifteen seconds of absolute hysteria.

The glasses, incidentally, went on so he could read his material off a piece of paper, made odder by repeating one from the first video – Tories bringing down unemployment by raising the school leaving age to 47 – though the fact it still works after a decade is a political point in itself. There's a joke about an amateur ventriloquist (“gollocks”), one about a woman mugged by two “queers... one pinned her down, the other one did her hair!” and I'm pretty sure he does a racist one, but the only words I can understand are “black man” and the gales of laughter which follow.

The camcorder mic picks up audience members repeating lines as they cackle, and there's a genuinely cracking line about his luckless father: “he had a kidney transplant off a bedwetter.” As anyone who watches my videos knows, piss is a rich vein, Mundon reminiscing about sharing a bed with many siblings, with so much pissing “we used to have a bloody rainbow over the bed. And we was that poor, even that was in black and white.” Absolutely lovely stuff! But alas, Munden's time is over. I've seen some tonal shifts over the years, and few compare to what's experienced here when old Jon Raven walks out again. He begins with the Song of the Staffordshire Man, “in forge and kiln and mine,” and I think he's confused Staffordshire men with fantasy dwarves?

I'll be honest, there are few warnings in life I've ever taken seriously, and occasionally, there's a hard lesson to be learned. Ah yes, this is an electric fence, and now my urethra hurts. One such warning's doled out by Raven: he'll be singing songs about canals, not exactly putting my mind at rest with the promise “it's not as bad as it may seem though, there are light moments so to speak.” I'm not too worried. How many songs about canals can there be? Fucking loads, pal. Sing songs about canals he does, and the audience, wild during Mundon's set, are silent as the dead, having passed away through respect for their Midlands canals. The intro itself, explaining the canal songs, goes on for some minutes, during which the number of times in my life I've heard the word canals increases 5000%. “Fol-dee-ry-day, it's the song they're all singing down Brammagen Way!” Their wi-fi must be down. In a small piece of trivia, Jon's son is Paul Raven, bassist with Killing Joke, Ministry and Prong.

The guitar gets swapped for a bodhrán for a song called The Bold Navvies which, again, is about the canals, with lyrics about “choosing your own tool,” “strip off our jackets,” “drive our poles,” and “he who comes last” leaving me pig-sick imagining the suggestive faces Munden would've pulled. Deadly serious canal-talk, Raven would never disrespect the waters with allusions to willies. Someone next to the camera blows their nose, and the first restless coughs are heard as we get our third canal song about “gongoozles.” Is this a test? Anyone who sticks through this gets to see the strippers? Proper stout Black Country lasses with fannies like doormats? If only. It's literally just canal songs about canals.

I'm trying to understand the mentality of anyone who'd equally enjoy the raucous antics of Tommy Mundon and Jon Raven's downbeat, heartfelt odes to waterways. “Which one was your favourite?” “Oh I couldn't possibly choose!” Sick bastards. “Oh the Thames, Severn, Trent and the Avon, our countrymen frequently rave on...” Please stop. “...the banks of the ray, the banks of the ray, ever gay!” The coughing increases, spreading across the audience like a plague pit, over a lengthy explanation for a fourth song about canals. I wish I was dead. He's not even playing an instrument now. Acapella canals. Canals. C'anal. Cuh, anal.

Then there's a fifth one. Fuck me. A cheery ditty titled “poor old horse,” which mourns for the canal horses “taken down to the knackers yard, turned into glue, and salted down for sailors' use.” He cues everyone for upcoming lyrics like Barry Manilow so we can sing along, a theatre-full giving a choir of “we said oh mam, that horse will die, oh poor old horse...” Poor horse? Poor me!

Oh you've got another one have you, mate? Canal song number six. Sure, go for it. A cover of a song by the Dudley Canal Preservation Society, where we can all join in with the “push, boys, push!” The only canal pushing I yearn for is from C. J. de Mooi. I want to taste those sweet, black waters. There's two minutes left on the tape when he introduces the next artist, meaning this can't be, as titled, a full show. As an intro, he reads out some Black Country Humour about a district nurse eating a pea which an old lady has already defecated, doing all the voices. But no, it is a complete video release, which they chose to end with the intro for an act who never appears, before a surprising copyright showing the year of release as 1999. Limp Bizkit and Y2K and Britney, and Black Country Night Out. If this is Black Country culture, just leave me with Dogshit Alley, thanks.