Geoff Norcott

Seen any good stand-up recently? It’s a loaded question, but if you have, there’s every chance you didn’t view it via terrestrial TV. You might instead have laughed at some brash American on Netflix, or a deeply un-PC comic on YouTube – or more likely still, a comedian sitting in the palm of your hand. Over the past 12 months in particular, stand-up clips have been going down a storm on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. The kind of clips which do well online have come as a surprise to some of the industry’s traditional gatekeepers. In a shock twist, it seems audiences still find stuff about the differences between men and women pretty funny (and we’re talking behavioural differences here, rather than biological or semantic ones).

Even though being a right-centre comedian accords me default outsider status, I am not in any way an edgy bloke. Consequently, I find myself surprised at just how unnerved I’ve become by the drift towards a cashless society. I’m not yet at the stage where I’ve started using phrases like ‘the great reset’ or renaming my first son ‘Crypto’, but I have become a bit twitchy about yet another huge change concerning the fundamentals of how we live (and the way we all ignored it when we realised we could go to a restaurant with a built-in reason to not tip). The perils around the exclusive use of contactless payments are – like most things – something I hadn’t thought about much until it affected me. I was doing a couple of gigs in Dublin.

I am going to the Edinburgh Festival this August. That declaration could be said in a number of ways. Celebratory (unlikely). Showing off (possibly). Self-promotion (in there somewhere). However, I’ve been in comedy a while and have reached what my wife recently called ‘solid middle-age’, so announcing I’m going to the Fringe is more of an incantation: a chant designed to steel myself for a taxing endeavour. Not that there will be much tax owing afterwards, I’m not likely to make much money. No-one in Edinburgh does as well out of the Fringe as some bloke called ‘Josh’ who rents you his airing cupboard for six grand. I’m assured this year should be special, as the festival hasn’t happened (properly) since 2019.

I have a confession to make to Spectator readers. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s time to come clean (no, I haven’t become a Labour voter – the Tories have been bad, but not that bad). I’ve been experimenting with using meat and dairy substitutes. Hear me out. I’m not proud of what I’ve done. As a right-of-centre comic, indulging in anti-woke sentiment, eating animal products is a badge of honour – the unspoken custom of our movement. Ceasing to do so is the kind of thing which could raise alarm within the ranks, like a bite on the neck in a zombie film. My main motivation for this possible lifestyle change is that my tour shows start at 7:30pm and I am 45.

Just over a week ago – and to some derision from both friends and followers – I proudly announced I had started a TikTok account. The criticisms were wide and varied. Buzz words included ‘Sad’, ‘Tragic’ and accusations about an interest in young people that wouldn’t be decent to print here, but that Boris would probably shout across the despatch box. I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that your average Spectator reader isn’t the absolute target market for a site like TikTok. But Michael Gove probably wasn’t the go-to punter for a hard house night in Aberdeen, so you never know. My reasons for joining TikTok were fairly simple.

It’s become a bit trite to talk about the ills of social media. Hypocritical too, as such debates are often conducted within the very same arena of social media, which reminds me of the early eighties and adults telling me to steer well clear of smoking whilst lighting another superking off the one just going out. A less remarked upon social ill is the danger of ‘listening to stuff’. Hear me out. The last few years have been a golden age for audio entertainment: the explosion of podcasts, the popularity of audiobooks and those high production value documentaries that now ‘drop’ on BBC Sounds with all the pomp of the latest episode of Succession. The technology to produce this sort of output has been around a while.

In a recent preview of this year’s diet Edinburgh Fringe a local reporter wondered aloud why so many stand-ups were doing shows as a work in progress. I, along with numerous comics, let him have it, self-righteously pointing out that most of our gigs since March 2020 have been staring at a Macbook. Or outdoors shouting punchlines to someone ten metres away asleep on a deckchair. It takes a while to get your confidence back when you have flashbacks of gigging downstairs in your house to a webcam with a make-shift mic-stand and knock-off lighting. A low point came when a neighbour walked past my window and momentarily locked eyes with me.

When the government announced an extension of lockdown restrictions I was furious. Furious for political reasons. Furious for economic and libertarian reasons, but - if I’m completely honest - mainly furious because I had tickets to see The Shapeshifters to do a DJ set on Saturday 26th June. However, I have to admit that on the recent occasions I have been out in busy places it’s taken me a while to get my social ‘sea-legs’ back. When the moment came I wasn’t fully match-fit for the chaotic demands of a city centre boozer. Just like a football team preparing for a tournament, I should’ve eased back into it, with a few warm-up fixtures at village pubs before throwing myself in at the highest level (All Bar One in Leicester Square).