"Yeah?"

Lessons in comedy from David Lange at the Oxford Union

Sometimes I need to write something just to get it out of my head. Ever since watching the (excellent) play “Helen Clark in Six Outfits” last week I’ve been thinking about New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange’s 1985 debate speech at the Oxford Union. I can’t tell you how the speech made me feel at the time because I was ten and it wasn’t on my radar. But I learnt the legend of the “uranium” line fairly quickly like everybody else. Then one night, 20 years ago, home sick in London, I found the audio of his entire, hour-long speech hosted on the Public Address website and since then I have listened to the whole thing about one hundred times.

I want to talk about it because it is beautiful in so many more ways than that famous uranium line, which is itself very beautiful. The line is mostly misquoted. It has to be because the original line doesn’t quite work out of context. You’d be surprised how often that happens. Nobody in Casablanca says “play it again, Sam”; Mae West never said “why don’t you come up and see me some time?”; unbelievably, no film character ever said “Me Tarzan, you Jane”, or “Luke, I am your father” or “greed is good” or “Do you feel lucky punk?”. The version of those lines that we remember aren’t necessarily better than the originals, but they get to the point much more quickly and work better in conversation.

Likewise with Lange’s line in this debate. It is so much funnier in context but this is how much context you need:

Lange is the crowd favourite. He is in full flight. There is a convention at this particular debate where any member of the audience can get up and supply a question or interjection at any time. You would have to be criminally insane or, as it turns out, an American to try and outwit Lange in front of a live audience but here he is, an articulate but clearly nervous young man whose cameo doesn’t go nearly as well as he hopes:

INTERJECTION: Mr Lange Sir, if I may address you as ‘mate’, perhaps.

[This is the guy’s first big joke and it absolutely tanks. God, he must know he’s in trouble already and he still has his so much of his pre-written banter to go!]

You talk about the quality of rationality. Now I’ve heard many reasons advanced for keeping American sailors out of ports – it usually has something to do with the honour of the women involved, or the property value of the ports.

[The guy is literally dying at this point. All the oxygen has disappeared from the room and 600 people are silently begging him to finish]

What I should like to know, sir, is why you don’t do the honourable and the consistent thing, and pull out of the ANZUS alliance. For whether you are snuggling up to the bomb, or living in the peaceful shadow of the bomb, New Zealand benefits, sir. And that’s the question with which we charge you. And that’s the question with which we would like an answer, sir.

He has been talking too long. He has interrupted the star (remember, Lange got his standing ovation before he started speaking). And worst of all he has finished his interjection with a slightly aggressive rhetorical flourish, acting as though he has the upper hand. So David Lange, this kid wants an answer.

LANGE: … and I’m going to give it to you if you hold your breath just for a moment. [laughter] I can SMELL the uranium on it as you lean towards me [deafening laughter]

There is so much going on here in comedic terms. First of all, he is teaching this kid a lesson, which is a morality play anyone in the world would buy a ticket for. Secondly, the joke has already done its work by the time he gets to “moment”. He’s told this insistent mosquito in a tuxedo that he’ll get what he wants if he just stops talking, which is objectively very funny. So, in fact, that turns the uranium line into what comedians call a “tag” - a piece of stagecraft that gets a second laugh out of the same moment. Sometimes the tag gets a bigger laugh than the joke, sometimes it’s the other way around. You can possibly imagine the varying responses to, say, the following versions of the same joke

… and I’m going to give it to you if you hold your breath just for a moment. Let’s not delay any further, I’m sure it’s past your bedtime.

… and I’m going to give it to you if you hold your breath just for a moment. I can hear the nuclear reaction happening in between your ears.

… and I’m going to give it to you if you hold your breath just for a moment. It’s 8am in New Zealand - I want to finish this speech and go get some breakfast.

Well, we could workshop it all night. The fact is his version of the line is perfect as it is, in terms of content (we’ll get to that) but also in the rhythm of his delivery. Any comedian will tell you the most important thing is to get all your words out in one piece. A slight stumble or retake will absolutely kill the timing of the joke (this is so true that a good comic who stumbles over the first bit of the punchline, even the unimportant bit, will bail out of the whole thing and move onto the next joke). But Lange’s mouth is a machine gun.

I’ve heard stories over the years about who “wrote” the line for Lange, an idea I found very offensive at the time. It seemed so clear to me that this was an ad lib - a perfect ad lib! - so I was shocked to read last week (yes, I’ve been obsessed) that this was at least the second time he’d used it. Here’s Justice Stephen Kos, writing 20 years later about the event:

[Lange] seems to have practised some of his best phrases for the debate at the meeting [the previous day] with Baroness Young. He told her that when the British High Commissioner had come to see him in Wellington, “I could smell the uranium on his breath”. Apparently she did not laugh.

But, of course, it still counts as an ad lib. Even if he had that phrase stored somewhere in his giant brain, there was no guarantee he would get to use it. No guarantee a young American would get up in his face demanding answers. If we assume Lange had the idea, we still have to admire the way he formed the exact right words into the exact right sentence to use it as a devastating retort in this particular moment.

Video replays of the event always cut off most of the American kid. It’s an essential part! Please enjoy the audio below, though I will admit that watching the video and seeing the pure joy on the adjudicator’s face when he realises what Lange has said is difficult to beat.

But there is more to the story. Because for me there’s a moment I love even more than the uranium line, and it involves Lange punishing the same kid! This time it is not a one liner, it’s just one word.

You see the incident above is actually the second interjection of the evening. We will get to the first (from a different character) in a moment, but suffice it to say Lange deals with it in such a confident way, the audience is by now watching him with total adulation and trust (trust is underrated! If you trust somebody you’re watching speak, you have permission from your nervous system to completely relax and enjoy it).

So when our young American friend gets up for the evening’s second interjection, he already has the crowd off side. His clunkers about “call you mate” and “reputations of the women” and “property values of the ports” never stood a chance of succeeding because Lange murders him as soon as he stands up. Lange (like I say, in full flight) is about to move on to the next part of prepared speech when he looks up and realises he has another drongo to deal with. The response here is pure instinct and also, I should say, pure New Zealand. He looks at the guy and says “yeah?”

I’m sorry to do those two clips in reverse order but I had to start with the most famous line, uranium, and work backwards. Let’s now go further back on the journey and meet the first interjector. He is better than the second - British, so naturally more at home in the room, but also quicker to the point and, sensibly, not treating this like an open mic comedy night. His point is well made:

INTERJECTION: Sir, the one area of the world you refer to that has had no casualties is that area defended by nuclear deterrence. Namely Europe. Not one of those 30 million [war casualties since WW2] lived in Europe.

But the last word is barely out of his lips before Lange talks over him. Lange has already sensed the direction of his attack and has his counterargument formed. You need to listen to this moment on the tape because it is the sound of a two-trailer truck driving through the room. Not only does Lange have an answer, but he has a perfectly formed answer. And he has a joke! It’s a bit of a had-to-be-there sort of joke but it’s a reference to Europe’s recent decision to block New Zealand beef and dairy exports. Check it out:

Have you considered - HAVE YOU CONSIDERED the proposition for one moment that that war, that cost those casualties might have entrenched within people the YEARNing for peace, the GROWTH of democratic institutions, the accountaBILITY of political representatives, so that NONE wishes to wage in conventional or nuclear terms, any war? Why attribute to the presence of that awesome potential clash of firepower a stability which your politicians have been arguing they created?

You can’t have it both ways! Either you are hailing a new, United Europe, marching to glory and to the exclusion of certain primary production from other countries …

[Laughter]

Or you have it there simply because you have counterpoised this terrible means of destruction.

I have listened to it over and over again. It’s not the joke that gets me, it’s that moment in the middle where he says “you can’t have it both ways!”. It’s the sort of rhetorical device that’s very useful in any sort of debate-style speech, but it usually require two weeks of planning to make it work. How fast has Lange set up and exposed this particular hypocrisy? Again, you can say he thought about it beforehand but the way he applies it to this particular interjection, with this beautiful rhythm of language (clumsily demonstrated by my CAPS additions above), and lands on a scathing, damning “you can’t have it both ways” is one of the most wonderful demonstrations of a human brain at work you’ll ever hear in a live broadcast. Please enjoy, with that “yeah” included at the end again just for fun.

I could go on. But let’s just do one more. It is, continuing this Memento-style reverse account of the 1985 Oxford Union Debate, right at the beginning. These won’t be the most brilliant jokes you’ll ever read but they show that there is something better than a brilliant line to a cold audience, and that’s a pretty good line to a hot audience. Somebody in a previous speech speculated that Lange might have been told off by Margaret Thatcher at a meeting they reportedly had the day before. Here’s how Lange begins his comments:

LANGE: May I say to the honourable gentleman who preceded me, there is nothing of what I am about to say which has been conditioned in any way by my meeting with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom yesterday …

[Laughter]

I did not meet her yesterday …

[Laughter and applause]

I am meeting her on Monday. But I know the apprehension that he feels at his constant fear of being summoned to that carpet …

[Laughter]

I mean you wouldn’t expect to get a round of applause for correcting somebody on your itinerary. But there’s something about Lange’s sing-song voice, the confidence and anticipation you feel knowing that he is going somewhere, and then that final line - giving back double to the guy who tried to zing him, by basically insinuating he is a coward. The best part of the whole thing is that Lange knows instinctively that you should, wherever possible, put a funny sounding word at the end or your punchline. He could have said office, or living room, but he chose a word that would suddenly have the entire room picturing the coward’s nervous toes, twitching inside his leather shoes. Lange chose the word “carpet”.

You can read the whole transcript here.

You can listen to the audio here.

You can watch a good portion (but not enough) of the video here.

You can read Justice Koh’s memories of the big night here

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