For decades, stand-up comedians entered the palace of entertainment by the tradesmen's entrance. Now the red carpet is rolled out, but do we have any idea what to do next? And where did this change in our status begin?In 1993, after David Baddiel and Rob Newman became the first comics to play Wembley, Janet Street-Porter declared comedy "the new rock'n'roll". Like the naïve pop bands of yore, in whose soiled footsteps we trod, young stand-ups like myself hit the road in transit vans full of lager to embark on expensively promoted tours from which we saw little, if any, of the takings. In this respect at least, comedy was the new rock'n'roll. Today, the death of recorded music and the tyranny of The X Factor means that even rock'n'roll is no longer rock'n'roll, just a stringy facsimile made of cat guts, navel fluff and hair gel. If this travesty is rock'n'roll, then stand-up comedy could be too, for latterly it's equally adept at fleecing vulnerable people out of hot-dog money in cavernous barns.
Takings for live stand-up comedy have increased tenfold since 2004, most of those tickets being sold at 40 or 50 quid a time for big TV names in stadiums and 1,000-seater-plus venues. And while all this may be good for the bank balances of agents, promoters, venue managers and stand-up comedy's heavy hitters, is it good for stand-up comedy itself? Does the possibility of enormous reward necessarily encourage creativity?
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