Meeting Mr Mason

 The great Jackie Mason has died, aged 93. Onstage, he was hilarious. Offstage, well . . . Twenty years ago, in October 2001, I went to interview him and it wasn’t an easy ride.

On the afternoon of Tuesday 11 September, as the terrorist atrocities were unfolding in Lower Manhattan and Washington DC, I happened to be standing in London’s Shaftesbury Avenue, immediately outside the Queen’s Theatre, gazing up at a sixty-foot portrait of the legendary New York comedian, Jackie Mason, and pondering the words written in gigantic neon lights below his crinkly, demonic smile: ‘If it’s in the news it’s in the show!’

Three weeks on and I am now sitting face to face with Mr Mason.  Off the hoarding, he is more like 5’ 4”, a squat, square Yiddisher Munchkin with hair the colour of beetroot juice (carrot at the temples) and an accent no New York Jewish actor would dare risk for fear of being accused of parody.  Given the horror of recent events in his home country, the first thing I want to know is how the world’s most acclaimed (and highest-earning) stand-up comic can fulfil the bold promise so prominently advertised on the Queen’s Theatre façade.

 ‘I can’t.’  Mr Mason speaks softly and at breakneck speed.  ‘I don’t laugh at tragedy.  I’m not one of those alternative comedians who are sadistic, perverted and have disgusting humour.  I didn’t find anything funny on 11 September.  You couldn’t tell a joke.  It’s like coming to a funeral when your father passed away and the guy next to you is laughing.  There’s nothing to laugh at.  Four, five days later, it’s different.  People are looking to get away from the misery they’re feeling.  Two nights ago I performed on Long Island – people laughing louder than ever, screaming with laughter, releasing their tension.  But we’re not laughing at death.  I’m making jokes about the airline security system in America where you have X-ray machines at the airports and who is controlling them?  Fifteen year old kids who are rejected by McDonald’s.  These are the kids who are supposed to watch for terrorists.  They wouldn’t know a terrorist from a couch from a stove from a dance.  They don’t know where they are, what they’re doing.  They get three dollars a month.  They can’t count, they can’t see, they can’t hear, but they’re supposed to detect the terrorists.  They have metal detectors that don’t detect plastic, and all these explosives are made of plastic, and all these detectors are a hundred years old, and they only detect metal, and so the only things these kids can find is keys.  The only way they’d ever detect a bomb is if it was attached to a key.  The kids love to find your keys because the next day they rob your house.’

 Once Mr Mason starts rolling there is no stopping him.  During our hour together he sets off on several set-piece riffs (on wine, on Muslims, on old folk in Miami) that build in intensity and brook no interruption.  He rumbles on relentlessly, without pause, without expression, barely raising his voice, and steadfastly gazing, not at me, but at his press representative who is laughing more obligingly than I am. 

I have seen Mr Mason on stage and there he is hilarious.  He knows what he is doing.  He has been doing it for forty years.  The son, grandson and great-grandson of rabbis, he has three brothers (all rabbis) and became a rabbi himself aged 25.   Three years later he gave it up (‘Somebody in the family had to make a living,’ he says), changed his name (he was Jacob Maza) and has been telling jokes professionally, day in day out, ever since.  ‘Why am I more successful than any other stand-up comic in the world?  Because I work ten times harder.  If you see the average comedian, they tell the same jokes they told ten years ago.  I want to be as relevant as today’s news.  Tell a fair joke about something that just happened and it gets ten times the laugh than a great joke about something that happened a year ago.  I don’t use writers.  I read six or seven newspapers a day.  I’ve been reading since six o’clock this morning.’

 Immediately he sets out to prove this by offering several minutes of breathless reflection on Tony Blair, beatific at the Labour Party Conference, (‘Isn’t he handsome?’), the baldness of William Hague and Iain Duncan-Smith (‘If, God forbid, you needed a cancer operation and the surgeon showed up, would you worry about how much hair he has?’), the royal row over Prince Edward’s television company invading Prince William’s privacy (‘I hear Charles blew his top.  Charles on architecture and vegetables I can take. But Charles talking about morality?’).   

 Mr Mason hits his stride when he lights on the photograph of Bill Clinton in the newspaper.   ‘Clinton is the most celebrated low-life that ever lived.  Most people if they lived like that would be ostracised, condemned and destroyed.   Clinton goes around raping one girl after another and is waiting to be applauded.  And he is applauded.  He can get a bigger crowd by showing up than any human being – including the President.  Did you know Clinton was disbarred from practising law?  This man is too big a liar to be a lawyer.’

 Mr Mason may be slightly hard of hearing or he may simply be choosing to disregard the occasional interjections I throw his way.  A number of my questions go unanswered, but when I say that Mr Clinton has the charmer’s knack of wooing you by looking you straight in the eye, Mr Mason looks me full in the face for the first time.  ‘With Clinton it’s ninety per cent looks.  Splendid figure, perfect hair and he stands there like a male model.  And if he says a friendly word people can’t get over it.’

 ‘What about President Bush?’  I ask.  ‘Do you have fun with Bush’s wayward way with words?’

 ‘I used to.  Now it’s more difficult.’

 ‘And isn’t it going to be difficult if, while you’re in London, British and American soldiers start getting killed?’

 ’l’ll talk about something else.  You can tell what is sensitive and what is not. You don’t talk to the Pope the way you would to a buddy in the pub.  You sense a mood and an attitude in an audience,  just like a person.’

 In the past Mr Mason has been accused of being insensitive, homophobic, mysoginist, racist even.  Has the advent of political correctness blunted his style?

 ‘Not really.  Blacks are a special case.  If you mention anything with reference to black you are considered prejudiced or bigoted.  Black is now the holiest word on earth.  As soon as two white people mention the word black, they start looking around like a detective to see if a black person is listening, and the next day in the paper they say “Jackie Mason is a bigot” because he said the word “black”, even if they don’t know what I said next.   Press people are desperate to prove how they love civil rights and the best way to prove it is by destroying somebody and claiming he’s a bigot.’

 I tell him that one change I think he will find since he last visited Britain is that we are now more aware of the Palestinian cause, and perhaps more sympathetic to it.

 ‘Whoever is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause is either ignorant or stupid.  Israel has offered the Palestinians ninety-five per cent of what they wanted, including half of Jerusalem.  What was the Palestinian response?  To kill more Jews in the streets.   Listen, people love crooks and thieves and murderers.  People love Clinton.  How did Hitler convince a whole country?   It’s not the first time a publicity machine gives people an impression that’s fallacious.   People are told ten more Palestinians are killed.  In fact, it’s ten more murderers killed.  They don’t call them murderers, they call them Palestinians.  So it sounds like Jews are just killing Palestinians.  But nobody knows or cares that Jews are just sitting minding their own business and being killed for no reason.’

 Even his publicist isn’t laughing now.  Mr Mason says quickly, ‘On stage I don’t try to get involved in political issues.  If anything sounds serious it’s not for me.  They’re not here to hear a lecture.  This is not group therapy for a Jew.  This a place to tell jokes.’

 Mr Mason’s manner – bantering, hectoring, questioning, teasing – goes down better with some than others.  I quite like it, but, after he has taken his picture,  our photographer whispers to me, ‘If you can form an opinion of someone in just eight minutes, what an unpleasant man he is.’

 I ask Mr Mason if he thinks he has any enemies.

‘I have a lot of jealousy from other comedians.  They’re all walking around furious.  They can’t work out how I do it.  They can’t stand it because there is nobody more insecure than an entertainer.’

‘What about you and Frank Sinatra?’  I ask.   Word is there was a feud between them in the late 1960s, when Mason was enjoying his first success and Sinatra was king of the heap.

‘When Sinatra came to Las Vegas all the stars from all the shows paid homage to him like a pope, and I always ignored him.  And that bothered him.  He kept saying to people, “Who the hell does Jackie Mason think he is?”  Then one day I was sitting in a car and somebody punched me in the mouth.  I was sitting in my hotel room and, all of a sudden, “bang bang”, and I looked up and I saw the windows were broken; they were all shot through and splattered all over the floor.  It was the Sinatra crowd, because he resented the fact that I never paid any attention to him.  I know for sure it was him.  I know the Mafia guys who were his buddies.’

‘Your publicity people told me it happened when Sinatra was going out with Mia Farrow and you said he had toupées older than Mia Farrow.’

‘No, I never talked about Sinatra in my whole life.  He wanted me to notice him, that’s all.’

I am nearing the end of my audience with Mr Mason.  His publicist is getting restless.  I have only a handful of questions more.  They don’t take long.  ‘What makes you laugh?’ I ask.

Mr Mason shakes his head.  ‘You ought to be ashamed to ask such a stupid question.’

‘Who makes you laugh?’

‘That’s closer to an almost better question.  Jerry Seinfeld, Bruce Forsyth.’

‘How old are you?  According to the press cuttings, you’re 71.’

‘Why do you make me 71?  I’m no place near 71.  I’m 64, not 71.  Every time I do an interview they say “Obviously in his seventies”.   People are wandering around hoping everyone else is about to drop dead.  Subconsciously that’s what they’re all hoping.  Since I am about fifty, I’ve never seen one interview when they had my age right.  It was never younger.  It’s like when you got to a restaurant.  Did you ever see a waiter make a mistake in your favour?  You never saw it in your life.’

‘Well, let’s get it right this time,’ I say, smiling.  ‘What is your date of birth?’

 Mr Mason is not smiling.   ‘I’m not interested in giving you my date of birth.  I’m not talking about it.  I’m not talking about my age.  Don’t bother me with it.  If you want to talk about my age, talk to somebody else.  It’s offensive, the whole conversation.  It’s ridiculous.  What the f--- has my age got to do with the show?  Either you like the show or you don’t.’

‘They say you work every night.  That can’t be true.’

‘I work almost every night.’

‘Why?’

‘I love the performance, I love being on stage, and obviously deep in my heart I have to be a sick ego-maniac to need it so much. It’s a form of begging for love.’

 ‘Don’t you get love at home?   Some of the press cuttings say you have a wife.’  (Mr Mason is repeatedly reported to have married his manager, Jyll Rosenfeld, in 1991.  He denies it categorically.)

 ‘I’m really not married,’ he says, dismissively.  ‘I was never married.’

‘You have a partner, a girlfriend?’

‘No, no.  I never had one personal girlfriend in any serious sense.  I don’t pretend to a person that I am in love with them.  I never said that in my life to anybody.  The whole concept of romantic love involves a responsibility for a kind of commitment that I don’t want.’

Jackie Mason leads a bizarre life.   He lives alone.   He spends several hours every day reading the newspapers.  He performs somewhere most nights and, almost always, to extraordinary acclaim.  After the show, he unwinds over a modest, alcohol-free, supper.  The last time I saw him in person was earlier this year, around midnight, in New York, at Sardi’s, the Broadway restaurant.  He was sitting at a corner table, alone, looking old and quite bleak.

 If you can, go see Jackie Mason at the Queen’s Theatre.  His show opens on Wednesday and runs for three months.  I guarantee he will touch your funny bone.  I doubt very much he will touch your heart.