FESTIVAL COMEDY | Teen Religion
John Pendal Njambi McGrath
Shazia Mirza Tom Ward
happened. ‘Teenagers are ripe for radicalisation,’ says Brand, whose young dabblings in the right-wing waters of Christian extremism provides inspiration for her debut stand-up show, I Was a Teenage Christian. Her parents were laid-back and liberal, so she imagines her attempts at rebellion were probably ‘Saffy Syndrome’, like Julia Sawalha’s militantly sensible, teetotal 16-year-old bookworm in Absolutely Fabulous. ‘You feel valuable, which is appealing,’ Brand explains. ‘Plus, maybe you’re interested in the afterlife and ghosts and mortality at that age, too. It all depends what religion gets you i rst really: it could have been dangerous. If I’d been 13 during the Crusades, I’d probably have been off on a horse, slaughtering people.’
Like Brand, it was the social aspect of religion that sucked comedian John Pendal in. As a shy, awkward child of devout Baptist parents whose lives revolved around prayer meetings and church trips, he was bullied at school. After attending a holiday camp for fundamentalist Baptists at Butlins when he was 16, and joining the church’s theatre and youth group around the same time, Pendal suddenly felt popular. ‘I was allowed onstage, with a mic! As the bullied kid, it felt like heaven. Religion did a lot for me; God was like this invisible friend when I didn’t have any.’ Pendal became involved with his church in Watford, and enjoyed feeling respected in the Baptist community. Until, that is, he mentioned to a church leader that he was turned on by a muscly male bodybuilder he’d seen in an episode of Neighbours. ‘The church sent me for counselling. I was told “gay” didn’t exist. They tried to convince me there were no homosexuals in Africa. I was very confused and considered abstaining from sex, like celibate Catholic priests do.’
38 THE LIST FESTIVAL 4-11 Aug 2016
Katy Brand
It wasn’t enough though. When Pendal formed a platonic friendship with a gay man from the Metropolitan Community Church – dubbed the ‘Inclusive Church’ because of its doors-open policy to the LGBT community – he was kicked out of his youth group and stonewalled by many old friends. ‘I got handwritten hate mail from members of my old church, saying I was on the path to hell.’
In fact, those formative experiences within the Baptist church sent Pendal on a very different road. In 2003, he entered the 25th International Mr Leather contest in Chicago, and became the i rst Brit to win. ‘The contest involved me giving a speech, so I basically got up and joked that I’d been raised in the strict teetotal bubble of the Baptist church, then got kicked out for going for a drink with a man. It got a huge round of applause and I won.’
Winning meant he spent eight years touring the world, giving speeches to the BDSM community, and discussing kinks and fetishes. It was a perfect training ground for stand-up comedy and supplied plenty material for his debut show, John Pendal: International Man of Leather. ‘I had no self-coni dence in my looks: I still don’t. But coming out aged 22 – whilst in the Baptist church, and with everything that’s happened since – has dei nitely given me an outsider’s view on the world, which every comedian needs.’ Pendal now has ‘mixed feelings’ about his religious upbringing. On the one hand, he made friends through his church, but he is deeply confused by certain hypocrisies. ‘I still never buy lottery tickets: the indoctrination is so strong. But after being condemned by the very people who had welcomed me, my faith was gradually kicked out of me.’
Religion also remains a double-edged sword for Njambi McGrath,