Larry Miller, contributing humorist
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Back around 1990 some British producers started hiring American comics for shows in England at the Queen's Theater (Theatre?) in London. Every two weeks they'd pick three American comics and put them on the bill with three English comics. I did it and loved it, and who wouldn't? You fly first class, stay in a nice hotel, and get well paid for doing your stuff in a grand hall. And there was plenty of down time to see the "Playing Fields of Eton," investigate the difference between ale and lager, and try to convince young, distaff comedy fans that there was, indeed, a very special relationship between Britain and America.
The audiences were great, large, and receptive, and there was no problem "translating" your act. Most comics work with larger themes--dating, parents, drinking, et cetera--and, anyway, any performer worth a plug shilling ought to be able to entertain people who speak the same language, even if they call a bar a pub.
But there was one guy, an American, who had a terrible time. He couldn't buy a laugh, not one, not even a titter. Everyone else was doing great, just killing, but for him every show, every night, was a disaster, and the instant he walked onstage, the crowds that had a minute before been kind and joyous and generous suddenly resembled the Iraqi Parliament. I followed him every show, so I saw the whole thing from the wings, and the poor guy would spin down in flames like a Fokker and
stumble offstage looking like he had just walked through a car wash. (Apropos of nothing at all, I just remembered a story my father loved to tell of a captured German pilot after the Battle of Britain giving an interview on the radio. The stunned Hun had crashed after, oddly enough, hitting another of his own planes, and the British commentator, curious about the details, said "A Fokker?" And the German said, "No, no, ze fokker vas in a Mezzerschmidt.")
Anyway, this poor comic would stink up the place and then dart off to the nearest pub and drink like Hindley Earnshaw. (So did I, come to think of it, but never mind that now.) The thing about the guy was that he was a very good comic, and I instantly knew what the problem was, and not just because I know my business. You could've seen the problem, too. He devoted his entire act, twenty minutes, to one long, involved, specific piece on the hit game show "Wheel of Fortune," which was, probably, a killer bit for him in the States. Unfortunately--Can you see this coming?--"Wheel of Fortune" wasn't broadcast in England. There wasn't one Brit in the entire country who had even heard of it. So this lunkhead would walk out there every night and might as well have been speaking Martian.
The first night he did it, I turned to the old guy running the curtains and said, "Do you get 'Wheel of Fortune' in England?" And he said, "'Wheel of What?'" And I turned back to the stage and watched an otherwise good performer shake like an air raid victim.
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