If there’s anything ironic about being so scared of telling the wrong joke that you run straight into the arms of the House of Saud, it seems lost on the festival performers, who have, on the whole, described their experiences in Riyadh as positive – or at least positive enough to clear their consciences. The pervasive fright of the middle-aged stand-up comic didn’t go away immediately. Bill Burr, on his podcast, admitted that his idea of the Middle East had been hazy: ‘I literally think I’m going to fucking land … and everybody’s going to be screaming “Death to America” and they’re going to have like fucking machetes and want to like chop my head off.’ He was reassured when he saw that the Saudis have Starbucks, Pizza Hut and Dunkin’ Donuts. By the time he was delivering his material about ‘going to my gym and there was a bunch of gay guys there’, he was feeling a ‘great exchange of energy’ with the crowd: ‘It was fucking amazing.’ ‘It’s easier to talk here than it is in America,’ Dave Chappelle said during his set.
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