Comedian Andrew Maxwell has commented on his recent appearance at the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

Major comedians who appeared at the Festival included Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Jimmy Carr, Bill Burr and Omid Djalili. 

Journalist Helen Lewis actually went to the Festival and has written an in-depth feature about the experience for The Atlantic. You can read her full story here.

In the article she expresses her surprise that Andrew Maxwell opened for Jimmy Carr and Louis CK. He seemed to go down well with an audience made up largely of ex-pats and Saudi men (plus a smaller number of Saudi women). Lewis reported that Louis CK went down OK but as soon as he finished the audience left, rather than hoping for an encore.

When Lewis headed home she found herself on the same flight as Maxwell so took the opportunity to talk to the Irish comedian about his reasons for appearing. “I grew up in a de facto theocracy. You couldn’t get divorced. Abortion was illegal. Being gay was illegal. It was a democracy, but the church was everywhere. And in 10, 15 years, when I was growing up, it all changed,” he told her. Maxwell expressed his hopes that Saudi Arabia was going through the same process of change and at a much faster pace. 

He defended the idea that comedians were restricted about what they could say onstage, arguing that comedians often do corporate gigs where there are restrictions. "I’m not remotely laissez-faire about freedom of speech, but you’ve got to start where people are. We tried top-down state-building in the Middle East, and it failed.” Lewis said this was the most sincere defence she had heard for taking part in the festival. “It’s not a defence. It’s a fact,” he said.

Read the full article here.