How we laughed

Lloyd Evans

Wednesday, 29th April 2009

Lloyd Evans charts the death of political satire and looks to where comedy is heading next

Live comedy ought to be extinct. For five years the internet has been waving an eviction order in its face, but despite the YouTube menace, and its threat of death-by-a-thousand-clips, live stand-up is blossoming. You’ll have noticed this if you read newspaper adverts. Eighteen months ago they were full of barmy invitations to take out a loan for 10 times the value of your house, or to ‘buy’ (that is rent in advance for 99 years) a room in a boutique hotel in Prague or a glass-box-with-a-view in Abu Dhabi. These schemes have been replaced with full-page ads promoting comedians on nationwide tours. The scale is vast. Stadiums like Wembley Arena and London’s O2 (née the Dome), usually the preserve of rock stars, are being booked by stand-up comics. Sheffield Hallam’s 14,000-seater stadium will this year host Russell Brand, Al Murray, and Eddie Izzard. The internet has rewritten the commercial rules of comedy just as it has for recording artists. Before YouTube, comics reluctantly toured in order to promote their cash-making DVDs. Now the position has reversed. Recordings make relatively little and the major revenues come from ticket sales.

Happily for the comics there’s a powerful craving for the congregational experience, for public acts of cathartic mirth. Frank Skinner recently hosted a Credit Crunch Cabaret in the West End, top price a tenner, which consciously evoked the austerity of the 1930s. ‘I’m a George Formby fan,’ said Skinner, ‘and I love the idea of him making jokes and pulling us through the Depression and fighting Hitler.’ But the economic blues don’t fully account for the comedy boom, not least because the closer you look at this downturn the less impressive it seems. The economy has shrunk by 2 per cent this year, so we’re 98 per cent as rich as we were on Christmas Eve. Which doesn’t sound too bad. Oil shares are up, mining’s climbing, China’s economy continues to rage like an infected boil, Tesco just made another billion quid, Debenhams stocks have doubled this year, and even the gloomiest forecasters point their long-range lenses at 2011 and see green shoots everywhere.

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cecil porter

April 30th, 2009 5:01pm Report this comment

"Before YouTube, comics reluctantly toured in order to promote their cash-making DVDs. Now the position has reversed. Recordings make relatively little and the major revenues come from ticket sales."

Maybe it's different in the UK, but in the USA, touring has always been where the money is at.

JohnAnt

May 2nd, 2009 12:44am Report this comment

The best Ben Elton joke I know is the story (not told by him) of a reporter interviewing his father, an eminent physicist and expert in higher education, back in the 1980s, when Ben's career was still nascent. 'So what about your son?' came the rather hapless question. 'What about him?' was the reply. 'But...he's a well-known comedian!' faltered the journalist. 'Is he really?' replied dad in a mildly interested tone.

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