"We then took a shortened version of what we'd been doing in the pubs, with the best gags and things like that, out to cabaret clubs and things in the north of England for six weeks. And we became a big success"
About this Quote
There is a wonderfully unromantic honesty baked into Neil Innes's memory of success: it arrives not as destiny, but as editing. The phrase "a shortened version" quietly punctures the myth of the lightning-bolt breakthrough. What worked in pubs got trimmed, tightened, and repackaged for cabaret clubs. Innes is describing craft as filtration: you don’t discover "the voice" so much as you cut everything that doesn’t land.
The subtext is as telling as the anecdote. "Best gags and things like that" is classic Innes understatement, a performer’s shrug that doubles as a flex. Comedy, especially the kind that grows out of British club culture, lives and dies on repetition, on learning the room, on timing refined through boredom and bruising silence. The pubs are the lab; the clubs are the marketplace. He makes that transition sound casual because, in that circuit, it had to be: you couldn’t afford grand narratives when you were lugging material from one cold room to the next.
Context matters here: northern England’s cabaret ecosystem was a proving ground, a place where audiences didn’t politely "get" your joke because you were clever. They either laughed or they didn’t. Innes frames "six weeks" like a tour schedule, not an artistic pilgrimage, which is the point. Success is presented as logistics plus selection pressure, a Darwinian process where the weak gags die quickly. The charm of the quote is how it demystifies fame without draining it of joy: the big success is real, but it’s built from the small, ruthless decisions.
The subtext is as telling as the anecdote. "Best gags and things like that" is classic Innes understatement, a performer’s shrug that doubles as a flex. Comedy, especially the kind that grows out of British club culture, lives and dies on repetition, on learning the room, on timing refined through boredom and bruising silence. The pubs are the lab; the clubs are the marketplace. He makes that transition sound casual because, in that circuit, it had to be: you couldn’t afford grand narratives when you were lugging material from one cold room to the next.
Context matters here: northern England’s cabaret ecosystem was a proving ground, a place where audiences didn’t politely "get" your joke because you were clever. They either laughed or they didn’t. Innes frames "six weeks" like a tour schedule, not an artistic pilgrimage, which is the point. Success is presented as logistics plus selection pressure, a Darwinian process where the weak gags die quickly. The charm of the quote is how it demystifies fame without draining it of joy: the big success is real, but it’s built from the small, ruthless decisions.
Quote Details
| Topic | Success |
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