I was asked recently if I thought comedians made it big quicker these days. It's an interesting question. I guess the question arose for two reasons. Firstly because so many comedians are playing massive arena gigs while still relatively young and secondly because maybe the internet is speeding things up.

I'm not absolutely convinced that the process is happening any faster than it did fifty, sixty years ago, Although I guess it depends when you consider a career has started. The first wave of post-war radio stars, such as the Goons and Frankie Howerd, were breaking through by the late-1940s. Five years earlier many of them had been fighting the Nazis, so that's pretty quick. On the other hand they had also been cutting their teeth in concert parties during WW2 so they certainly didn't start from scratch as soon as the Germans got out the white flag.

Some people clearly do break through speedier than others but I suspect that that has happened in any era. Peter Cook was already writing for West End revues featuring the likes of Kenneth Williams while he was still at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Less than five years later in 1961, he was on the West End stage himself in Beyond The Fringe.

The notion of an overnight success, however, is a tricky one. When I interviewed Jason Manford in 2010 I asked him if he felt like an overnight success. He said "I started over ten years ago when I was 17, so when people say I'm an overnight success I say it's been a very long night." Even naturally gifted comedians like Manford do not emerge out of thin air. Writers have described Micky Flanagan as an overnight success, but while Flanagan did not really take off until about five years ago, I've got a cutting on my desk from Time Out in around 2005 when he appeared at the Soho Theatre, so he was no novice then. In fact he was in the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year Final in 1998. In the same year Daniel Kitson was runner-up and three years later was a Perrier Award nominee – that's about as meteoric as you can get in modern stand-up.

There are very few comedians who emerge fully formed. People think of Billy Connolly becoming an instant star when he appeared on Michael Parkinson's chat show in 1975, but he was already a star in Scotland with a hit live album under his belt. The nearest thing to an instant star that springs to mind is Rowan Atkinson, whose one-off show on London Weekend Television around the same time as Not The Nine O'Clock News singled him out as a unique talent - one silent sketch in it featured the seeds of Mr Bean, though it would be another decade before Bean took centre stage. Yet Atkinson had still paid his dues, doing the Edinburgh Fringe and a Radio 4 series before he graduated to television. 

It obviously helped that there were only three TV channels to choose from when Atkinson and Connolly broke through - this meant that a large chunk of the country saw them for the first time simultaneously, creating a degree of momentum. But getting attention is no good if you don't have the chops to back it up. Shazia Mirza was quickly plucked from the clubs and put on shows such as Have I Got News For You? post-9/11 because she wore a burqa and talked about terrorism, but she would probably admit herself that she was not ready for such widespread exposure. In 2003 Aaron Barshack played Edinburgh shortly after making the front pages of the tabloids, but his fame did not help. If anything it was further proof that you've got to put in the hours.

There is invariably a conspiracy theory knocking about that class is involved and that Oxbridge graduates have a TV series waiting for them as soon as they have taken their books back to the college library. I don't think there is much truth in this. Certainly Footlights alumni do often make it big - David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Ben Miller, Mark Watson etc are the latest crop to prove this – but they still have to do the work and have the talent. 

No amount of industry connections and old school ties can compensate for a lack of comic ability. Maybe middle class comedians with parental support who don't have to rush out and pay off their student loan immediately might be able to gig more while still young rather than get a proper job, but it is not going to make them any funnier in the long run.

Similarly with the internet talent is everything. You can certainly go viral at an early age, but if you can't then pull it off in the flesh – as Bo Burnham has – you will be a one hit wonder. Well, alright, a multi-million hit wonder. The internet and digital television does mean that comedians get onscreen quicker, but it takes the same sort of time to make it into the mainstream. Everyone has been talking about Seann Walsh and Josh Widdicombe spearheading the next generation of Apollo-fillers but it has still taken them a few years to get to that stage. 

There might be young comedians filling big theatres but that's not because they've made it big quickly, it's because they started young. Jack Whitehall dropped out of university to pursue comedy, Daniel Sloss started out onstage as a teenager. As for Kevin Bridges, he might claim to be in his mid-twenties, but I think he's really a 55-year-old veteran who probably played the original Comedy Store thirty years ago.

There is clearly no way you can beat the system. Want to make it big? It takes time. It won't happen as quickly as you would like. Looking back over the last 75 years the only thing that can make you a star any quicker is another World War.