Steve Bennett does not look like a kingmaker. Grey haired, bespectacled, talking fast enough to force a journalist to slow the playback on a recorder, he describes himself simply as an audience member who has seen fuckloads of comedy. That audience member runs Chortle, the UK comedy guide, and for two and a half decades he has run it entirely by himself.
In British comedy, a strong Chortle review is currency. At the Edinburgh Fringe, where more than 1,600 comedy shows compete for attention each August, Bennett sees five shows a day for nearly a month. A five star rating can sell out a run. A one star can empty a room. Comedians know it. Agents know it. The industry watches what he writes.
A one man institution
Bennett grew up in Solihull listening to his father's Jasper Carrott albums. At school he edited a satirical magazine alongside Stewart Lee, then took it to Oxford where he studied physics and booked comedians for his college. Armando Iannucci, Rebecca Front and David Schneider were contemporaries. He left physics behind, worked in newspapers, and in 1999 taught himself HTML to launch Chortle because film had Empire and music had NME but comedy had no dedicated publication.
The site went live in 2000. Today it provides 35 to 40 per cent of his income, the rest coming from sub editing work. He calls it a labour of love. The industry calls it the most important arbiter of taste in British comedy.
The observer effect
Bennett's presence in a room changes the show. One comedian described the experience of spotting him in the audience: the show starts orbiting around the reviewer. Bennett knows the physics. He cites the Heisenberg principle, though he admits it is technically the observer effect. He has seen nearly 10,000 gigs. His tastes have refined. His tolerance for the merely fine has dropped.
Yet he is not cruel. Comics and promoters describe him as a force for good. One calls him a good egg who knows his onions and hides at the back of the room. Another says everyone wants Father's approval. Bennett himself says five star and one star reviews pour out of you because you want to tell people how wonderful or how terrible a show is. Most shows sit in the middle and those are the hardest to write.
Canadian comedians know the dynamic. At Just for Laughs in Montreal or the Toronto Comedy Festival, a handful of reviewers hold similar sway. The difference is scale. The Fringe compresses the entire industry into a few square miles for a month. Bennett tears through it, notebook on knee, the most powerful man in a room full of people trying to be funny.
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