Who is popular today?

Available onlineRussell Kane saves the day with energetic Covid gags as technical issues and uninspired material blight the first edition of a new standup series
LIVENow has streamed “a string of successful live concerts”, blared the publicity, by the likes of Dua Lipa and Ellie Goulding. So an hour’s comedy would be plain sailing, surely? Alas, no, on the evidence of this first edition of LAUGHNow, a live standup series launched on Friday. For a 10-minute period mid-show, the video stopped and started, and the sound vanished completely – problems briefly solved before rearing up again to thwart headliner Russell Kane’s big finish. And so, in an hour intended to reconnect us with the joys of live comedy, these alienating “technical issues” left me missing it even more keenly than before.
But what am I missing? The vigour, certainly, and incandescent wide-boy charisma of Kane’s contribution, reprising gags from the Covid-themed set I saw him perform last November. But not so much the workaday club comedy that characterised the rest of the bill. MC Jarred Christmas joked about his new lockdown job “wanking blokes in Swindon”. Jo Caulfield made cynical noises about lactose-intolerant people and middle-aged parties. Even before the technical issues, LAUGHNow (performed to a small in-person audience interspersed with screens showing viewers at home) was not transporting us to the most rarefied heights of comic creativity. Continue reading...