There is a song in the repertoire of England football supporters entitled "Ten German Bombers". Mimicking the structure of the nursery rhyme "Ten Green Bottles", it is a triumphalist anthem in which the number of Luftwaffe aircraft depreciates by one in each verse, as they are shot down by the RAF.
"I always wonder," Henning Wehn likes to remark to British audiences, "whether they sing that in Coventry. If they do, it would seem to be somewhat inappropriate because – I don't mean to boast – but we flattened the place."
After which, noting the mortification that invariably afflicts some audience members when they hear this, he adds: "So who's got no sense of humour now?"
Wehn, 41, gets away with this sort of edgy rhetoric because he is the very best kind of stand-up: a satirist who, having established common ground of humanity and compassion with his public, invites them to confront their own prejudices. He accomplishes this despite suffering from a condition that, historically, has proved a greater hindrance to a comedian's sustained popularity in Britain than being mute, blind or dead – that most lethal of attributes: German.
When we meet, in his dressing room at the Palace Theatre Redditch, a handsome 400-seat venue of the kind he will soon outgrow, I explain that his work puts me in mind of a song by the American Terry Allen which begins: "I love Germany; I don't care what they've done."
"These stereotypes," Wehn tells me, "certainly persist. Germans are still obsessed by Hitler. Germans have no sense of humour. Women can't reverse park. I see these prejudices as a form of panto."
Wehn lives with his girlfriend in Crouch End, North London. His distinguished CV includes memorable contributions to comedy panel shows on UK television such as QI, Would I Lie To You and, in charge of the dictionary corner on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. ("Nigel Farage's nightmare," colleague Sean Lock remarked. "A German in charge of the Oxford English Dictionary.")
He has an extraordinary command of English, even if traces of his native accent have fused with a London inflection to a degree that recalls Jack Lemmon's assessment of Tony Curtis's Cary Grant imitation¬
in Some Like It Hot: "Nobody talks like that."
Raised in the Ruhr Valley, he studied economics before coming to Britain 13 years ago when, with rudimentary English, he became marketing manager for Wycombe Wanderers FC. A year later he ventured into a comedy club above a pub in London. "It started as a hobby," he says, "and it just developed. In many ways what I'm doing now is still marketing." He actively enjoys hawking recordings of his shows, which have titles like No Surrender and My Struggle and – what greater compliment could there be for a comedian's elegance of technique – bear repeated viewing.
It requires a particular sensitivity to establish so close a bond with a British audience that he can ironically reprimand them for obsessing over "those unfortunate 12 years [of Hitler's reign] which never even happened anyway".
"You can address holocaust denial," Wehn tells me, "so long as you don't deny the holocaust."
A modest and thoughtful character off-stage, in his current British tour, – Eins, Zwei, DIY, which continues until November – Wehn is unambiguously direct on subjects such as Rebekah Brooks ("The day she got off I'd happily have joined Islamic State") and Prince William's wedding ("A peculiar spectacle. Two million lining the streets to watch over-privileged people drive non-competitively").
At Redditch, he delivers a lecture on Austrian history which includes the line: "In 1913, Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky, Freud, Jung and Bruce Forsyth lived together in Vienna."
Stand-up comedy, Wehn explains, is "a job where you can live your dream with no experience or qualifications – very like being a British plumber. In Germany, workmen have to serve years of apprenticeship until they acquire some idea of what they're doing. In Britain it doesn't matter how terrible a job you do, so long as you can recount your own underachievement in an entertaining way. It can earn you promotion."
"Should you visit Germany," he continues, "do not attempt that strategy. It will backfire in the most spectacular fashion".
His audience leaves the theatre purring. We adjourn to an Indian restaurant next door. Wehn, I suggest, shows little sign of the self-destructive traits such as alcoholism and eating disorders that have famously plagued great comics.
"I've always been a late developer," he says. "Give me time. I may yet blossom. I could be a wreck in weeks." Onstage, he says, "I do German it up a bit. But essentially now I think like a Brit.
A seminal moment in this context, he says, occurred at a club in Bolton, in the North of England. "I got heckled with the line: 'F*** off back to London you Cockney w****r'," he recalls. "At which point I thought: OK. I'm assimilated. That's it. I've arrived."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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