Seek your own pleasure without justification from critics

We disagree with pretty much every word of this, but it’s still definitely worth a look if you’re interested in the mindset of Helen Razer, one of Australia’s more high profile comedy reviewers.

The thought that reviewing comedy is a misuse of the alphabet occurs to me often. As I submit reviews for publication, most profusely in three festival weeks of each of the past 14 years, I can’t but concede that the only beneficiaries of this labour, apart from myself, are (a) comedians who need a pull-quote for their promotional posters and (b) anonymous bloggers who need to say that I am, particularly when compared to them, really shit at reviewing comedy.

As much of the latter half of this article is about the importance of being paid, and considering that Razer is paid for her comedy reviewing (though she says that “writing about comedy pays almost as poorly as comedy itself”), we’d have to say that – by some standards at least – she’s doing a heck of a lot better at reviewing comedy than we are.