I've been thinking about Jack Carroll's triumphant first appearance on Britain's Got Talent and have been trying to decide whether it will be good for the 14-year-old's career or not. Plenty of exposure certainly. But could it be too much for someone so young? Looking back on past young comedians, staying power, not wit, seems to be the issue.
Carroll is by no means the first school-age stand-up. Quite often kids seem to get into it initially because it is sort-of the family business. When Carroll came on I did – to coin a comedy cliche – wonder if he was the love child of Joe Pasquale and Sue Perkins. But as comedians grow up they tend to choose a different path. I remember Alex Langdon, the son of comedy writer John Langdon doing a show in Edinburgh years ago and some TV, but as hard as I've tried – I spent, ooh five whole minutes on google – I can't track him down.
Norman Lovett's daughter Kitty did stand-up in Edinburgh when she was around 13 but I don't think she is still on the circuit. Janey Godley's daughter Ashley Storrie started stand-up at 11, did her own show at the Fringe show at 13, then fell out of love with it when puberty really kicked in, but started doing sketch comedy in her twenties and is now going to do some stand-up supporting her mum at the Edinburgh Fringe this summer. Preston Nyman, the son of Derren Brown's associate Andy Nyman is 14 and did a show mixing magic and mirth in Edinburgh last year, so it'll be interesting to see if he becomes more interested in girls than gags over the next few years.
Live comedy is a good way of learning to express yourself. Eros Vlahos claimed to be the youngest comedian ever to do a full show at the Edinburgh Festival when he did a set in 2008 aged 13. Vlahos – who learnt his trade at James Campbell's Comedy for Kids classes – seems to have given up stand-up though, but is doing OK. He has pitched up in Nanny McPhee and more recently in Game of Thrones.
Jack Carroll ticked all the various necessary boxes to make Amanda Holden blub with joy on BGT. Back story, cheeky smile. I was particularly impressed to hear that he writes his own gags. He didn't have a hint of nerves, but as Ashley Storrie recently told blogger john Fleming, that goes with the territory: "You're not scared of anything when you're thirteen. I was fearless." It's when the hormones hit and you become riddled with self-consciousness that things may get difficult and you want to spend your evenings in your bedroom with the walls painted black.
Carroll's act was a tight, well-honed mix of Harry Potter gags, self-deprecating quips and a welcome bit of politics about benefit cuts, but hardly groundbreaking, so I wondered how he would fare at a real gig. Pretty well by all accounts, suggesting that the sterility of the TV studio did not do him justice. I've never come across Carroll on the circuit, but he recently did a benefit gig for the Depression Alliance at the Union Chapel alongside Jo Brand, Seann Walsh and Stewart Lee and apparently stormed it – and this was not a patronising BGT crowd at all.
So maybe Jack Carroll will be OK in the long run. Jimmy Carr has given him the thumbs up, as, of course has the lovely David Walliams and the rest of the panel, who, let's face it, were hardly ever likely to send him packing. He has certainly got the talent to make people laugh, the question is does he have the talent to get through the next few years when he enters the long dark tunnel of teenage angst.
As with child actors, there are not many comedians who make the transition and stick with it into adulthood. Only Ross Noble springs to mind – he had to be sneaked into gigs via the kitchens when he was a 15-year-old underage stand-up. Carroll's success means that he may be able to bypass the club circuit where you often have to be 18 to perform anyway now. But can he bypass the horrors of being an adolescent?
