Oh I’m sorry, had a chance to watch the videos now. I replied early morning, always a mistake.
He picked on me as I was fidgetting (long story!) and in his eyeline. He did it in a very disarmingly nice but brutal manner! He didn’t do it for laughs really, we just had a conversation at the beginning of the show that he started. 
Different strokes and all that. Especially in clubs, I think that people expect crowd work, it makes each show feel unique. If you book tickets in the front row IMO you are telling the comedian that you are fair game.
I seem to be a bit of a beacon for stand ups, despite rarely sitting right at the front. In a couple of cases the comedian has come over at the end and said hello which was cool. I’ve been the mark in two Derren Brown tricks as well.
One of the last gigs we went to pre Lockdown was Brydon, Mitchell and Webb. Our friend works in marketing at the venue so we got middle of the front row seats. I should have had my name on the poster I was spoken to so much.
To some extent, I think it is expected but some comedians are really not very nice about it.
Dara O’Briain is a really good crowdworker - although he speaks to them a lot, its always friendly.
Yeah, I would not sit in the front row for Jimmy Carr or Fin Taylor.
Or Frankie Boyle.
I finished watching Damned tonight, and it’s really good. Probably not going to be everyone’s cup of tea (the main characters are social workers in the child services division, and every episode has its share of grim cases), but if it piques your interest I thoroughly recommend giving it a chance.
Oooh love a good comedy nerd chat.
Audience participation is a bit hack to me. If someone’s really good at it, then fair play, but the standard “what do you do?” stuff is so blah. It’s a good way to quelling hecklers or winning over a rowdy club, but beyond that it feels unnecessary. In the worst cases some audience members then take that interaction as license to heckle later in the show.
If you watch people like Dara, you can see them very carefully avoiding people who look like they are not comfortable with being spoken to. I guess its not much of a show if people just give terse, one word answers
I think its more to establish a rapport with the audience, to make them feel part of the conversation rather than just being an audience. Al Murray does it very well - although he jibes with the audience, you can tell its a collaborative thing between the audience member and him, not an attempt to belittle them for entertainment
Probably best not even post the links, but search YouTube for “frankie boyle audience abuse” or “frankie boyle audience annihiliation” for some of his rudest and most cutting highlights. Side note: his end of show monologue on dogging during an episode of his last series of New World Order was terrific and even made himself corpse with laughter.
As opposed to someone like Stewart Lee, who makes the audience a central component, but in a more general sense.
When Dara was on Com Com Pod he said he plans his tour shows with 10 minutes of crowd work. One of the things he does which is cool is to use that crowd work for call backs later in the show.
I believe it was him who said that Paul Daniels was brilliant at talking to the crowd.
I think compering/ crowd work is a particular skill that some comedians are great at whereas others are a bit naff. Done well it’s great. We saw Laura Lexx at a family comedy show and she was brilliant at it.
There’s very little worse than being in the room when a bad heckler tries to take over.
When it’s baked into the show, it makes sense. Jimmy Carr’s use is almost like asking if anyone wants an autograph. His show is so acerbic that some arrogant guy will go in wanting to get a reaction to talk about in the pub for years to come. Fitting that in as a thing to expect contains heckling to a single part of the show.
I think it fits more joke and observation based comedy as that Relatable Content® makes sense to kick off with some sort of relation to the audience. The more long form, theatre, surrealist, and/or high concept shows don’t really have a need for it though. James Acaster very rarely does audience participation for example, apart from maybe a bit in the encore once the main set is over. I don’t know what the likes of Glenn Moore or Tony Law would do with audience banter!
Living in Manchester, the circuit is still very club based, with a majority of observational comedians doing the age old schtick - audience chat, growing up in the north, few north/south divide jokes, “my wife/girlfriend”, then an edgy joke to close. It’s tiresome. Always love it when a London comedian visits and shakes it up a little.
I quite like how Robin Ince, Josie Long and Ahir Shah handle audience chat as an intellectual conversation without trying to be funny constantly. Sets the mood without churning material or joke hunting.
I know a number of comedians will also do ‘pretend’ audience work i.e. they’ll look as if they are commenting on someone in particular but actually they are addressing a random space, but they don’t invite the audience to speak back - its almost like comments breaking the 4th wall in films or plays.
One of my favourites for crowd working is Russell Howard, we saw him on a warm up show in Swindon a few years back on a Mothering Sunday’eve (on his way to Bristol to stay with family, handy) with some new material he had and just questions from the crowd that he had collected previously on a box, and it was hilarious.
Many, many years ago, before he’d been on TV or anything, I saw him at a local festival in Bristol. He did a set where he just riffed on stuff the audience asked. Someone asked if he’d run out of material and he said he hadn’t needed to use any of it.
He’s so famous now he doesn’t get to do much talking to crowds as he’s in huge venues.
I know. But I think every year he does a couple of those sessions from questions, where he actually gets new material, and it is a good laugh. Swindon wasn’t that big a theatre, and I used to live in Chippenham, so it was a no brainer. The only problem was that we arrived just in time and I didn’t have time to slot in a question.
C and I just watched the first hour of The Queen’s Gambit, and while I don’t think it follows the storyline of the book exactly, it doesn’t seem to be a distortion of what the book is about, and the characterization is good. I think we’re going to stay with it.
Continuing Yashima’s mention of James May (albeit accidentally posted in another thread), my favourite May show was The Reassembler. In a world where every show seems to be deafiningly loud and feature three cuts every five seconds, there was something reassuring about seeing him spend an hour of screen time trying to repair a lawnmower or food mixer, while his mind wandered. Refreshingly relaxing.