Categories
cinema comedy

The best heckle ever?

Via The Times:

Kirk Dou­glas had a son, the lit­tle-remem­bered Eric Dou­glas, who was an actor and stand-up come­di­an. He once came over to the UK to do some gigs and inad­ver­tent­ly cre­at­ed one of British comedy's finest leg­ends. Eric wasn't hav­ing a great gig at a Lon­don club; he was going down the pan. His open­ing line, I seem to remem­ber, focused on the fact that he lacked the cleft in his chin pos­sessed by both his father and broth­er. The audi­ence was not in the least inter­est­ed. Their indif­fer­ence even­tu­al­ly over­whelmed him and he final­ly shout­ed: "Do you know who I am? I'm Kirk Douglas's son!" The room looked on in silence, then some­one in the audi­ence stood up and said: "No, I'm Kirk Douglas's son." He was swift­ly fol­lowed by sev­er­al more. With­in sec­onds, the entire audi­ence was on their feet, all claim­ing to be Kirk Douglas's son, in a pitch-per­fect par­o­dy of the scene in Spar­ta­cus. That, by anyone's stan­dards, is a tough gig.

Read on: A nice dis­cus­sion of the dark side of heck­ling going on at The Guardian.