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It’s been bugging me.

The stand-up comedy I saw at festival  …  something was missing.

I saw David  Newton, Siv Ngesi, Mark Sampson and Stewart Taylor.

All good shows. Mark is a hoot and is a great improv, Stewart, David and Siv are well produced, slick even. Great, hard-working, honest, South African guys (you are in Mark!) and a safe festival ticket.

So why was I feeling this emptiness?

Young audiences seemed to get it and maybe, as my 73-year-old friend said: “You are old.”

Well, as a pimply teen I recall watching the late Pip Freedman (I think). It made my gut weak with laughter. You wanted todie laughing.

“You won’t say that now,” said my older mate. “You’ll cringe”.

He’s referring to Pip’s take on people of colour being, in all likelihood, highly offensive.

The point is: we really need to laugh from the darkest depths of our being.

And that is the job of our comedians, who form a very useful (and hopefully lucrative) frontline at fest.

In the past, the stand-ups brought people to festival who would normally not be interested in the “serious” art being produced on stage.

And they were white.

But that is changing. New, younger, festinoes — black and white — want something different.

What we have now is a lot of lifestyle material, cultural interaction (or lack thereof) stuff about white and black, with some Xhosa bits thrown in by Siv and some Coloured stuff thrown in by Stewart Taylor.

All good, funny and informative.

But  here’s my five cent:  there’s nothing really large, or epic, or bold and courageous about this work.

There’s nothing really contemporary that matters enough.

These guys are not talking about the things that consume South Africans – not one Zuma joke did I hear, nothing memorable about sport, religion, politics, economics, no real reference to people who would normally be the bread-and-butter of stand up comedians – people in power.

And yet these people, with all their foibles and corruption, are, I say, the stuff of national life.

Are our comedians playing in the kiddies’ pool next to the ocean?

Where’s the Zapiro element? Where’s the graduation to satire?

I hope the response will not be that our comedians won’t be driven by politics.

I am, in fact, suggesting that this is the next level.

I say we want it and you guys are not giving enough of it.

This festival demands originality. Festinoes want to be pushed, challenged, offended, appalled, engaged. And politics and leaders are part of that.

You can start poking fun at  the very festival  bosses, if you want.

You guys are just too safe. And possibly not fresh enough.

Ous, step up now.

Stop playing in the shallow end.

Grow up, get out the gym, and come jol with the big okes and anties.

* If you need advice, ask Corne and Twakkie (their Helen Zille  rip-off is still being spoken of in the kitchen).

** Gary, Bevan, Your Tooth Fairy, gosh bro, sho … Nah. Kotch.

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