Your co-comedians on the show are Vlad Ilich, Jonny Pelham and Priya Hall. What do they each bring to the mix?
It’s such a good bill. Priya is amazing. She’s a new act from Wales and she’s got one of the best accents in comedy. Her Valleys accent is just so great and she has what all the best comedians have, which is a unique world perspective. Growing up as a brown woman in the Valleys, that’s not a perspective you usually get. And her stuff about her mum and her cats is so funny. I just love her. She’s so good and to see her absolutely smash it in front of a telly audience was brilliant. With Vlad being from Europe, he’s so good at pointing out the ridiculousness of British people to ourselves. We always like to hear how ridiculous we are. Then with Jonny, we started gigging around the same time and he’s always been a great mix of being a brilliant storyteller without being light on the jokes. You’re so jealous of him because his jokes are perfect. It was such a treat to be on the same bill as those people.
How does what’s been happening around the world in general and the UK in particular play into your own comedy?
I think it’s worth addressing at first because there’s this huge collective experience. Because we’re not out of the woods yet, no-one really knows how to feel about what’s happened. There’s this big chunk of collective processing and possibly even grieving over everything that’s happened that has yet to be addressed, and certainly that’s yet to be addressed on stage. It’s amazing actually because what you’re often trying to do with comedy is unite a room in a common experience and Covid is a global experience. Sometimes in London there’s international audiences who might not get your references to Byker Grove but everyone will get references now to hand sanitiser, washing your hands for 20 seconds and wearing a face mask. I guess we now all just have to write very original jokes around those.
When it comes to making people laugh, do you have boundaries you won’t cross?
I think you can joke about anything so long as it’s funny and the victims are clear, rather than being the actual victims of what you’re talking about. For example, I’ve got a podcast about true crime and when we make jokes they’re not at the expense of the victims of those crimes, they’re about the stuff around it. Serial killers might be considered a taboo subject but they’re not if you make sure the victims of the jokes are the killers and the ineffectual policing, not the poor person who’s been murdered. I’m absolutely up for doing stuff you’re not meant to joke about. That’s my sense of humour anyway and most comedians have incredibly dark senses of humour. Our boundaries are way past what normal, decent, healthy people think are the normal things to joke about. It does wrap your sense of humour. Sometimes I don’t think something is dark, then I do it on stage and the audience is like ‘Oops, bit much!’ I have to check myself with ‘Oh yeah, I’ve just been with comedians too much’. A room will very quickly tell you where its boundaries lie and it’s up to you to read that.
Why do you feel comedy is such a vital part of British culture?
I think there’s an element of gallows humour that provides a level of catharsis. It’s not long after something awful happens that you start to hear jokes about it. I think it’s the nation’s way of processing things. We’ve also got such a rich heritage of comedy. All the television that we’re so proud of, all the iconic stuff, is all comedy. It’s sort of built into our bones to appreciate comedy and hopefully that applies to live comedy as well.
How optimistic are you about the future of live comedy?
Erm, not very. One of the reasons that we’re so brilliant as a nation is that you can gig every single night of the week all over the country, with several gigs a night if you’re in the right part of the country. That’s one of the reasons our comedy circuit is so brilliant and why British comedians hold their own on the world stage when we’re from such a tiny nation. It’s because we’ve got this incredible circuit which funnels into touring, television, radio and all these great things where people get to see you. It’s all started in rooms above pubs, working men’s clubs and comedy clubs, and I worry that half of those places where you learn to be good are going to disappear. I worry about the venues as much as I worry about the comedians. Then there’s the wage deflation. Rates in comedy haven’t gone up in at least ten years, whereas petrol has and the cost of living has. We’re already struggling as it is and I now think that with far fewer people in the room and far fewer gigs comedians will have to work for less, which means some of them won’t be able to afford to do it anymore. We might lose a whole generation of voices, especially as we still have a problem in comedy when it comes to class. It might mean that the only people who can keep going are those who don’t need to pay bills because they’ve got financially-buoyant parents who are covering it for them. That’s my worry - that it will narrow the range of voices we’re getting and also wipe out a load of brilliant, experienced comedians who just can’t afford to work for little-to-no money.
What part can television play in keeping comedy alive?
Jonny has done Live At The Apollo but he’s also a regular gigging comic and a show like Stand Up For Live Comedy gives him a chance to further build his audience, so when the touring comes back he can do it to slightly bigger rooms. Also when people see you on telly it creates more telly work and for people like Priya and Vlad this show offers them a chance to be seen. They’ll probably get more bookings through it because it’s the sort of thing you can put on a poster to sell some tickets. It’s a great opportunity for them and you don’t have to use the same 20 comics across every single show. There are so many comedians out there who are excellent and brilliant and deserve a chance on television that for some reason has passed them by.
Interview supplied by publicists
