Earning the right...

Because every comedy circuit in the world is already heavily populated by comics of exactly his background, every new white middle class male comic with a degree in the Humanities has the same concern: how to stand out from the crowd?

I think that the reason why newer (usually younger and always male) comics make extreme on-stage choices is the belief that a stand-up comedy career is not so much a craft as a lottery. There is a sense that 'minority' acts (women, non-whites, comics with disabilities and so on) receive additional attention and therefore are afforded opportunities that the white male comics in question are denied. The logic goes something like this: -

Of course I've got what it takes to make it as a comic. My real problem is that because I'm new I'm not getting to perform in the big 'comedy literate' rooms where they'll get my stuff. Female and ethnic acts with much less talent than me get to play those rooms just because they're female / ethnic.

What angle will get me there?

In the four or so years that I've been on the UK circuit I've seen new comics transcend the imagined gamut of responses to this challenge with hypnotic yet predictably disastrous results. Through the cracks of my fingers I've watched everything from highly offensive, over-the-top racism to cod interpretative dance and from truly tragic costuming to deep expositions of vaguely traumatic personal histories without so much as a hint of a punchline in five long minutes of material.

Of course this is nothing more than the old marketing issue of Unique Selling Proposition (USP) writ large. But marketers know (or at least they should) that the USP is only the beginning of the conversation. As well as being seen as 'different', the market still has to see you as 'worthwhile' and that's where the craft comes in. Any comic who watches Roy Chubby Brown and sees only the swearing or who uses the fact that Eddie Izzard frocks up as the explanation for his success is in willful denial about the craft that all good comics bring to the stage every night.

We have to earn the right to take up the audience's time.