Comedy and brains? It can be done...

It always happens like this. I'm beginning to think I'm some kind of curse by proxy. The last three times I have seen Natalie Haynes, she's been, in order a)stalked, b)almost threatened with violence, and c) subject to a mass walk-out.

Tonight is the latter, with about ten per cent of the crowd walking out as their liberal sensibilities are offended by statements of common sense. See, Natalie Haynes is, despite what you might think, and what she sometimes says, is a thoroughly decent human being who is wonderfully evolved. Just someone who isn't afraid to say what she thinks, and at least she thinks.

It is only the unevolved that are not jugemental, she let slip last year during "Troubled Enough". And she's not afraid to offend. Still Not Sorry, despite the streams of abuse hurled at her through her website for positing radical theories and ideas that don't pander to the uber-conservative thinking that you don't joke about the dead. Or babies. Especially not Dead Babies.

So when Still Not Sorry takes the leap away from such cheery subjects as chronic illness, dyspraxia, and death to the altogether more controversial case of Hospital Politics, she is heard to ask if the next person to walk-out is heading way from the stage or towards it. This is not some fluffy comedy show that only skims the surface of human existence for a cheap gag. This is the humour in the horror.

This is not about making people laugh. Sure, it is about the ugly comedy of everyday life and the inherent absurdity of almost every situation we find ourselves in. But it's not a shallow gag-fest, taking the Big Bad Subjects, and showing us that nothing is as absurd as human stupidity. The stupidity that sees hospitals closing after being sued out of existence by the mothers of Dead Babies.

The moment where the resurrected corpses of babies, reanimated from microscopic slides like some form of biological lego salami, hover into the narrative, offer a glimpse of both the horror and absurdity of being human. And is, despite the repressions of those who fear The Big Things that lie at the heart of life, some of the most insightful and dark comedy there is. Most people are content to try and make you laugh. Natalie Haynes has a mission : to make you think and laugh about it at the same time.

After the Heart Of Darkness of the show, the finale, for lack of a better word, exposes some secrets so dark and terrifying about a certain well known set of children's toys whilst simultaneously exploring a delicately woven idea takes Rabbits, Elephants, The Bible Code and some attempt at fortune-telling usining mathematical reasoning that is the type of conceit that would fail miserably in the hands of a lesser talent.

This is the comedy of science, the comedy of horror, the comedy of ideas. This is not cheap fucking gags to make you laugh in a land of Comedian Savants aiming for a cushy TV show and a career writing shit novels and musicals.

You want comedy with brains, brawn, guts and glory? You want someone who isn't afraid to say what most of us are too chickenshit to think? You want this. You will never look a Smurf in the eye again.

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