So now celebrities think they can be stand-up comedians? What a joke

As a professional stand-up, who has been working on the circuit for years, I find the idea of celebrities learning the art of comedy in a two-part reality series pretty insensitive

Sink or swim: performing stand-up comedy can be a lonely profession (Getty/iStock)

They are coming for our jobs. The mainstream media loves them but don’t be fooled, they are taking work away from us.

I am, of course, talking about celebrities.

Earlier this year, Channel 4 announced Stand Up and Deliver, a two-part TV show where famous people have a crack at stand-up comedy. As a professional stand-up comedian, this doesn’t make me feel valued – particularly so in the light of Covid-19, during which the government has made our profession illegal for much of the year.

I have been performing in comedy clubs for more than 15 years. When I first started, the elders of the circuit passed on their wisdom. They told the novitiates that the only way to get good at this art form is to put the time in. We have all spent years trying out material to judgemental crowds, eating “meals” in motorway service stations and giving up our social lives in order to learn how to be a stand-up.

Now it turns out that a sex tape or famous parent might have saved us the trouble. To put it mildly, it feels a bit insensitive. Stand-up is often treated badly compared to the other arts. It took a pandemic for the Arts Council to accept we were artists. Lockdown has hit our sector hard and many talented performers are struggling financially. Even before lockdown, I heard of many fellow performers unable to stay in the industry. 

Across the two episodes, part of Stand Up To Cancer, five celebrities will battle it out and only one will be crowned Stand Up and Deliver champion. With most of the contestants having to quit stand-up, it’s just like real life for us, I suppose.

The show is raising money for charity and that is fantastic (although Covid-19 has put the event in doubt). But whether or not it goes ahead, there is a broader point to be made. As someone who took the long route round, I’d like to believe that you can’t learn stand-up overnight. It takes experience to know your place on that stage. It takes time to develop the skills of crowd-work and delivery.

But the problem isn’t the celebrities; it’s unoriginal pitching. Of course, it’s true that adding a celebrity to a TV show will make more people tune in. The problem here is our attitude to celebrity. Logic tells us that we should want to watch the finest and most skilful exponents of a discipline do their work. We should want to watch the best stand-ups doing stand-up and the best chefs cooking, but Celebrity Masterchef shows how that logic fails.

Stand Up and Deliver won’t be about comedy. While there will be moments that work, much of the entertainment will come from seeing people try and fail. It’s the same thing that allows us to enjoy someone’s shower-singing live on The X Factor. All we really want is to see someone from a reality TV show have an on-stage death. But if people want to see someone try and fail at stand-up, there are enough new acts ready to do that just as soon as we can get audiences back in clubs.

What a shame that our profession is being used as little more than a backdrop for a spot of celebrity watching. I would rant about this on stage but there’s been a pandemic.