L’esprit de l’escalier is a French saying that translates to ‘the wit of the staircase’; you meet somebody at the bottom of the stairs, walk past them and come up with a clever remark for them by the time you’re atop the stairs, when it’s too late to use it. Often, one cannot simply run down the stairs and let the person at the bottom know how clever one is. Either they have left, or the opportune moment has passed.
I recently finalized my registration for the 2012 Adelaide Fringe with my debut solo show, Awaiting My Moustache. At the time it was the best idea I had; a fifty minute comedy routine about maturity, with a surrealist bent in the vein of Waiting for Godot. Due to the nature of registering for the Fringe Festival, it is now too late to change the title of my show, which is a terrible shame.
A terrible shame, because hours after I registered for Awaiting My Moustache I had the creative breakthrough of the century, the perfect augmentation to raise the calibre of my comedy from that of local mediocrity, to international superstar.
I would dress like a nun.
Why did I not think of it before? A man dressing as a nun is the perfect comedic device – just think of it, a MAN dressed as a NUN! Does that not make your sides ache?
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is my L’esprit de l’escalier; some titles I might have used for my show if only I could have my time again:
- Twenty-Nun Puns About Nuns
- Nun Too happy
- Let’s Have Some Nun
- Nun for the Hills
- Janie’s Got a Nun
- Annie Get Your Nun
- Nun in the Oven
- All for Nun and Nun for All
- Crime and Nunishment
- Nun and Nunner
- Two Nuns Up
- How the West Was Nun
- How I Nun the War
- Nun and Dusted
- Stuck That Up Your Nun
- For Queen and Nuntry
- Happiness is a Warm Nun
- We’ve Only Just Benun
- Nunaway
- Here Comes the Nun
- Nun Two Three
- Seven Eight Nun
- Keep on Nunning
- Nun to Paradise
- Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Nun
- Nunning with Scissors
- World War Nun
- What a Nunderful World
- That Joke Isn’t Nunny Anymore
(By James McCann)
