Doing stand-up during a pandemic has been harrowing – but there is a silver lining for the comedy industry

With online gigs you can see people’s faces up close – their personal response to every single line. There’s nowhere to hide

‘Virtual open mics started popping up, and, desperate to feel like I wasn’t losing momentum, I signed up to as many as I could’ (Vix Leyton)

I did my 100th gig in March 2020. I had committed with petty gusto to doing 100 in my first year after one promoter too many touted the notion that it takes many, many shows before you can consider yourself a comedian. It felt like a landmark on the route to becoming established.

It was a skittish gig, as news about Covid got darker; and we uneasily joked how this might be the last one for a while – but also about our plans for the Fringe. We knew something was coming, but we were counting it in weeks, not years. Five days later, I was sent home from work. I have not been back.

Compared to established comics, I didn’t really lose anything tangible. I’d started stand-up unexpectedly. I’d taken a comedy course in the hope it would help me get over my phobia of public speaking enough to speak at conferences; I would moan that we needed more women on panels, but I was too scared to be the change I was demanding to see.

Afterwards, I tweeted about having the bug for it, which cosmically landed in front of the right person, Mark Watson, who challenged me to learn stand-up for charity as part of one of his infamous 24-hour shows. Until then, my path had felt clearly laid out. I was 35, doing fine in my chosen field of PR, living a nice life. But suddenly, a new path was unlocked.

I was at the start of my journey, and was lucky to have a job. But when white-noise panic about the virus faded into the reality of a life lived entirely within four walls, I missed the thing that had been slowly taking over my life. Virtual open mics started popping up, and, desperate to feel like I wasn’t losing momentum, I signed up to as many as I could.

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They were fairly harrowing in the early days. One notable occasion saw an audience member take it upon themselves to give loud, line-by-line feedback as the comedians went through their sets. The hosts of the event couldn’t identify her to mute her, so we all took Simon Cowell levels of critique that I have, grudgingly, to admit got the biggest laughs of the night.

There is a natural status afforded to a person standing in front of you with a microphone: you’re conditioned to listen. But when “stand-up” became “sit-down”, we lost that automatic advantage. Whilst our constructive heckler was disruptive, typically people unused to online comedy weren’t easily coaxed off mute, and lags in broadband left us occasionally out of step with the ones who were. It is tricky to level up your set when you can’t be sure which joke in your sequence the audience was even laughing at.

You can’t afford to be discerning with open mic – and I would often start sets describing physical venues as “the crime scene you see at the start of a police drama”. I never expected to miss those dark cauldrons, but with online gigs you can see people’s faces up close, their personal response to every single line – there’s nowhere to hide.

As more work days started to revolve around conference calling, people got more comfortable putting their cameras on and joining in, so it felt less like delivering a TED talk and more like a version of the gigs I used to know. But I was having to look for more subtle cues that I was on the right track, like a flurry of follows on social media immediately after my set.

I steadily found myself adjusting to this “new normal”, stealing the approach of flourishing comics like John Robertson and Sooz Kempner, who I saw building numbers by shifting a more formal performance style to a conversational intimacy. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it – and it was impossible not to notice how the digital element levelled the playing field for open mic nights, which, like every situation where someone can hold power, can be cliquey and political.

It also felt more inclusive: friends and family from Wales could tune in, and you could appear digitally all around the world without having to worry about how you paid for travel or got home safely after the show. Plus there was a whole new audience of comedy fans living in places typically underserved for live shows or accessible venues.

But I still felt like I could be doing more. Out of boredom, and a need for attention, I tested all the cliches, studying what other people were doing and trying to find my own niche – from interviewing comics over Instagram Live, to “unboxing” my shopping on YouTube. The quality of these projects... varied. I started off filming with my phone camera balanced precariously on a stack of books, and while my editing and production skills slowly improved along with the nerve required to ask bigger names to take part, nothing felt like it was really landing.

The thing I enjoyed most was hosting a Twitch panel show. This involved inviting comedians to compete to tell their best story on a topic randomly chosen from a bingo ball, with the aim of creating conversations that would never naturally occur. One night the tech failed and we lost the picture, but the audience stuck with it, and a friend suggested it might make a good podcast. By that point in lockdown there probably wasn’t a single comedian who hadn’t contemplated starting a podcast, with the successful ones making it look effortless and easy. I had been reluctant to entertain the thought, as I didn’t want to contribute to the noise – but with this I felt I had something new to offer.

Very quickly after starting The Comedy Arcade I realised it was neither effortless nor easy, but I loved it. I’m a panel-show devotee, but I feel the books need greater balancing in terms of gender, so I focused on including as many brilliant established female comedians I could – as well as great acts I’d fallen in love with – from the open-mic circuit. I also loved applying the marketing techniques I used in my day job to a project that was such a passion. It debuted at 22 on the Apple podcast chart for “comedy interviews” in its first week.

That was six months and 25 episodes ago. I have not only kept going but I have managed to adapt it to a fun live-stream show which I’m hoping to take around the Fringe, if it’s safe to do so. There’s no doubt that having a podcast that has connected with people has raised my profile in a way I would not have considered if the world had stayed on its axis. I even got shortlisted for the Leicester Comedy Award for best podcast – I didn’t win, but it felt like a huge deal anyway as someone so new.

Covid disrupted the trajectory I thought I was on. I’ll never know how the alternative version of last year would have gone, with the Edinburgh Fringe venue I had, for the show I never finished writing. But I feel so lucky that at some point in all the disruption, a new path lit up. I have never bought into the cliche that if you do a job you love you’ll never work again; I am still working full time alongside Zoom gigging, plus recording, editing and marketing the podcast. I have never worked harder or for longer hours, but I can’t imagine doing anything else.

I’m not sure what the ratios of these things will be for me when live performance spaces open back up. Whilst I’ve found my stride with online gigs, there is no comparison with that shared moment of connection when your joke lands in a busy room; and live stand-up is a different discipline in many ways. There is a lot of rebuilding to do. That said, whilst we have been forced into online solutions by necessity, I hope we keep the ones that work so that stand-up comedy remains accessible to everybody – from new acts starting out, and looking to learn, to the global audiences that have previously been locked to their location.