The Times reported yesterday that in their survey of 12 comedians on the Edinburgh Fringe who were asked to sit a formal IQ test that they were “overwhelmingly smarter than average”.
Half of the comedians surveyed were in the top 3% of the brainiest people in Britain, and one — Natalie Haynes — was in the top 1%, with an IQ score of 134. The Times report stated that of the 12, “Four were automatically invited to join Mensa and three were told that they were borderline candidates who would probably gain membership after a second test”.
According to the brainy Haynes, it’s both a help and a hindrance to be so bright. “It would be difficult to do a show without coming from a clever base point,” she said, “but when I started out people would say ‘You’re too clever’.
“One of the only places you can be clever and funny is Edinburgh. It’s not true that I’m too clever to play a club, but I’ve been told so often, I’ve given up trying to argue against it.”
Borderline Mensa member Stewart Lee — keen to re-take the test to establish his membership — comented that IQ questions tested only one aspect of comedy. “Another fantastic kind of comedy is farting and falling over,” he said. “There is no part of the Mensa test that determines when would be a good time to fart.”
Lee, like former Perrier winner Al Murray, is an Oxford graduate. So is this year’s Perrier Award winner (announced last night), 26-year-old Laura Solon, who is also only the second woman ever to win the award (the other winner was Jenny Eclair in 1995). She started writing and performing at Oxford (where she read English), and was spotted while appearing on stages in north London pubs.
