people on the internet: you shouldn’t hate people for the kind of media they enjoy! stand up comedians should be able to make jokes about whatever they want and it’s not okay to wish harm on them for it!
I'm glad people are enjoying my analysis of a Ricky Gervais routine! I'm particularly pleased to see in the tags that people have enjoyed an insight into how comedians approach the craft of writing standup.
So ... let's look at another routine. This time from someone I do think is good at the craft.
Let's look at the first 80 seconds of James Acaster's Recognise. This is the first of four specials on Netflix under the banner title Repertoire.
Firstly, let's look at a transcript. I've inserted a paragraph break every time there's a laugh. Sections in (brackets) are spoken over laugher.
[high energy booming music] [James Acaster arrives on stage] [Acaster takes the mic] [Acaster takes position, kneeling on his knees] [Acaster points diagonally upwards] [music cuts out]
Yeah.
How’s it going at the back? [back cheers] Strong.
What a good back section! Best seats in the house, the back, aren’t they? At a comedy show. Safe.
You’re so safe, you got your feet up. “No-one’s talking to us!”
I come out. “How’s it going at the back?”
[impersonating the back row] “What?!”
“Belittle the life choices of the front row, please.”
I’m not gonna belittle ANY of your life choices, don’t even worry about it. Not ‘cause I’m nice, by the way. ‘Cause I’ve been in this game long enough now to know that the front row are no longer the easy target they once were.
They’re now a bunch of prepped attention-seekers ...
... praying that I pick them so they can destroy me in front of all my new friends.
(Forget about it. It’s not gonna happen.)
You got a hoodie on, mate. I know a trap when I see one.
Wearing his hoodie, hoping he’ll lure me in with the bait. I ask him why he’s got his hoodie on, he hits me with some hoodie-based one-liners he workshopped with his stupid friends.
(In your sweet dreams!)
You should be ashamed of yourself. The gig’s not about you.
Check your ego at the door.
It’s about me, start to finish, the whole show.
First question - do you think this is better than the Ricky Gervais routine I posted a few days ago? And if so, why?
I do think it's better.
And I'm going to tell you why.
First off, if we count the paragraphs, there are 18 laughs in these 80 seconds. The Gervais routine had 5 laughs in two minutes. This means Gervais's routine has a laugh every 24 seconds. Acaster's has a laugh every 4.5 seconds. Which is over 5 times as many laughs-per-minute.
Now, let's break it down.
[high energy booming music] [James Acaster arrives on stage] [Acaster takes the mic] [Acaster takes position, kneeling on his knees] [Acaster points diagonally upwards] [music cuts out]
The first laugh comes before Acaster's said a word. Efficient! Let's see how it works.
The music builds the energy in the room. The crowd must cheer very loudly as Acaster arrives on the stage. The energy builds as he takes the mic.
Then, Acaster does something very strange - he kneels at the front of the stage. This is to set up a joke MUCH later on, so in the meantime, this is very mysterious. Mystery creates tension.
Then Acaster points diagonally upwards, and the music cuts out. This immediately breaks the tension. When tension is broken abruptly, we instinctively laugh.
This is a very important concept in standup comedy. Laughs come when tension is broken, so a standup show will alternate between building and breaking tension.
Lots of comedians will start a show with a sudden abrupt break in tension - it's a good way to get a first laugh. Acaster's joke here, though, is particularly effective. By kneeling before the music cuts out, he introduces an unusual amount of tension into the room first.
Yeah.
This line gets a laugh because of Acaster's delivery. This is a smug "yeah". He's just done something incredibly odd, and he's acting like he's just done something really cool. The dissonance creates a laugh.
It's a much smaller laugh than the first one - and that's okay. DIfferent jokes will inspire different levels of laughter. This joke also serves to establish Acaster's persona, so even though the joke itself doesn't get a massive laugh, it communicates Acaster's character to the audience, increasing the laughter for future jokes.
It also lets the audience know, "I'm confident, I know what I'm doing, you're in safe hands". Acaster's behaviour may be strange, but don't worry. He's got this.
How’s it going at the back? [back cheers] Strong.
Another laugh, because this is an odd thing to say. There's a disconnect between Acaster's persona and his words. Acaster's a strange, awkward geek. The audience doesn't seek his approval. So it's funny that he compliments the back section anyway.
It's not a huge laugh - because it's also introducing some tension. This doesn't sound like scripted standup yet, so we can't relax. We want jokes, observations, stories. Crowd work is worrying for several reasons. What if he talks to me? What if he does loads of crowd work? What if the whole show is just this guy messing about and being weird?
What a good back section! Best seats in the house, the back, aren’t they? At a comedy show. Safe.
HUGE laugh.
The key thing here is the timing. Acaster pauses between "at a comedy show" and "safe".
This introduces even more tension. He's still talking about the back section for some reason. What is this? IS this crowd work? Is he improvising?
And then the word "safe".
It's a huge relief. A big release of tension. Because that's an actual joke. It's an observational joke about the way we often choose to sit in the back because we're worried about audience participation. The observation rings true. Not only do we know the feeling, but as a live audience, we're feeling it right now.
The comedian has demonstrated that he understands us. He knows how we're feeling. And by making a joke, he's also revealed that this IS standup now. He's doing a bit! Thank God!
You’re so safe, you got your feet up. “No-one’s talking to us!”
An act-out! Acaster demonstrates the point he's just made by impersonating the back row.
Acaster's voices are pretty conservative. There are comedians who'll throw themselves into a character - accents, emotion, physicality. Acaster's impression is more subtle - but it's enough to get the laugh. He tilts his head back, closes his eyes slightly, and talks in a higher pitch and volume. This change of delivery gets the laugh.
I come out. “How’s it going at the back?”
This sentence doesn't get the laugh. The laugh comes from Acaster widening his eyes slightly.
He snaps into an impression of the back row before speaking, painting a picture in our minds of a back row being shocked and alarmed.
[impersonating the back row] “What?!”
This line would always get a laugh, I reckon, but it gets a particularly big laugh because Acaster delivers it off-voice. That is to say, he drops the voice he was doing for the audience, and delivers the line in a deeper register.
This is hugely effective in comedy performances. Subconsciously, we're expecting the same voice we heard in the line "No-one's talking to us!"
And that's not all. Acaster also performs physically - his face and eyes darting around. This inspires additional laughs even within the laugher that's already happening.
We started the routine going joke / laugh / joke / laugh. But now we've gone joke / laugh / laugh.
Physical performance is great for this. Talking over a punchline can interrupt the laughter, as the audience stop laughing early to hear the next line. But a physical performance - facial expressions here, but also mime or body language - can be enjoyed purely visually.
“Belittle the life choices of the front row, please.”
Notice again that this joke inspires a laugh and then a second laugh.
This is because the line changes the paradigm of the joke. Up until this point, this has been a joke about the back row feeling safe, then being frightened. This line changes that - and presents them as cruel.
Comedy inspires more laughter the more different approaches there are to punchlines. If every joke follows the same pattern, it won't be nearly as effective as a comic who mixes in different kinds of joke, as well as physicality, voices, and varied rhythm.
The longest of Acaster's jokes so far was several sentences - the shortest was a single word. This variety makes every joke seem funnier and more unexpected.
(We may here think of the way LLMs generate very consistent, similar-sounding sentences and paragraphs. Good writing is the opposite.)
So. This joke gets a laugh for several different reasons:
It's a weird sentence to imagine someone saying.
It's cruel, and that's funny.
It's an observational joke about the way comedians normally talk to the audience.
The way Acaster pronounces the word "please" is really unexpected.
It's funny in so many ways that the audience laughs, and then they absorb what they've just heard, noticing something else funny about it, so they laugh again. Momentum!
I’m not gonna belittle ANY of your life choices, don’t even worry about it. Not ‘cause I’m nice, by the way. ‘Cause I’ve been in this game long enough now to know that the front row are no longer the easy target they once were.
I love this kind of joke. It gets a laugh purely because the audience is excited by the premise. It isn't a joke yet - but it promises that jokes are coming. The anticipation inspires laughter.
So far, Acaster's jokes have been incredibly efficient. Short, quick jokes to build momentum. But now, this is a longer paragraph. Why? Because the exposition here will allow deeper, richer, more complicated punchlines.
As funny as the show's been so far, it would be tiresome to see a whole hour of jokes this short and simple. If we want the good stuff, we need longer, more complex setups.
There's also another, subtler effect here. Acaster's telling us he won't pick on the front row. This helps us relax. Even if we want to be spoken to, we'll still feel a little tense while waiting to see if happens.
We think it's a comedian's job to make us laugh, but that's actually their second job. Their first job is to make us comfortable. People laugh when they feel safe. By reassuring the audience he won't speak to them, Acaster makes the whole room feel safer, and bigger laughs will follow.
(On a personal note, I wonder if a bit's been cut here - the edit feels strange to me. It's possible there was more exposition - or even more punchlines - when this show was performed live, and for whatever reason it was made shorter for the recording. Just speculation!)
They’re now a bunch of prepped attention-seekers ...
Roast joke! This gets a laugh because it seems hilariously inappropriate to roast people who've paid to see your show. The uncalled-for cruelty is funny ...
... especially because it's also clear Acaster's being playful here. He's not really attacking the front row.
... praying that I pick them so they can destroy me in front of all my new friends.
See? Acaster grants status to the front row, reversing the normal dynamic between comedian and crowd. And once again, this joke is funny in a number of different ways:
The absurdity of thinking the front row is full of people who'll be able to effortlessly destroy a professional comedian;
The observation that people often sit in the front row because they want attention;
The incredibly weird conceit that Acaster thinks of a fresh audience as "new friends".
So again, the joke gets an instant laugh, but then it builds as people absorb the nuances of this layered joke.
(Forget about it. It’s not gonna happen.)
This is interesting! Acaster doesn't stop speaking after the words "new friends", and keeps speaking.
Comedians would normally avoid speaking over a laugh - but they'll make exceptions to create an effect. Here, the effect is that Acaster's character doesn't think he's making a joke.
I'm bringing back some old jargon from my early days on Tumblr. I'm going to use the name Acaster-H to refer to the actual human being James Acaster; the writer and performer of this routine. I'll use the name Acaster-C to refer to the fictional character performed by Acaster-H on stage.
This distinction exists for every comedian, even ones who seem to be identical on- and off-stage. The human comedian will make choices about the way they present themselves, and these choices will inform the way we understand their character.
Acaster-H has written a joke, performed it well, and the audience has laughed.
But in the reality of the show, Acaster-C has merely shared a genuine criticism of the front row. He doesn't think he's making a joke.
This is why it's weird to see a sitcom with a laugh track removed. In Friends or Big Bang Theory or How I Met Your Mother, the characters often say things that are jokes to the live audience, but not to the other characters in the scene. When the laugh track's removed, it makes the characters seem like unfunny try-hards at best, and chilling psychopaths at worst.
This is because a sitcom with a live audience isn't a realist medium. Friends isn't trying to portray a realistic scenario exactly as it would exist in the real world. It's a performance that will pause to let the live audience laugh. Ross is never going to talk until the audience has finished laughing.
But here, Acaster-C does talk while the audience is laughing, which subtly changes the way we understand his character.
You got a hoodie on, mate. I know a trap when I see one.
Funny in several ways again! I didn't mention this before, but I've been aiming to list my bullet points from most to least obvious. That is to say, at the top of the lists are the things making the audience laugh the quickest, and at the bottom of the lists are the nuances they notice a split-second later.
So in this punchline:
Talking to a specific audience member is NEW and SHOCKING! So far, this has been a routine about the audience. It hasn't involved the audience. The unexpected direct interaction is unexpected, getting a big laugh. This is particularly shocking because Acaster earlier assured us he wouldn't belittle the audience's life choices, which we mistakenly interpreted as a promise not to speak to us at all.
This sentence also reminds us that this is a live medium, and the comedian can see us the same way we can see him.
The absurdity of the idea that someone wearing a hoodie would do so as a trap.
The word "trap" is very funny - monosyllabic words ending in a hard consonant are intrinsically funny. This is why most swear words are one syllable, ending in a -k or -t.
Wearing his hoodie, hoping he’ll lure me in with the bait. I ask him why he’s got his hoodie on, he hits me with some hoodie-based one-liners he workshopped with his stupid friends.
Another paradigm shift! Up until now, Acaster's presented the front row as attention-seekers who'll be able to destroy a comedian who talks to them. But now, he's adding the idea that they've workshopped jokes in advance. The phrase "stupid friends" is also very childish - another new type of joke introduced in the routine.
(In your sweet dreams!)
Another example of Acaster speaking into the laughter ...
You should be ashamed of yourself. The gig’s not about you.
... and he comes in early with this line too. This is the crescendo of the routine, so Acaster hits us with line after line, inspiring more and more laughter, building to his climax.
Check your ego at the door.
Delivered with a sense of finality, this line tells the audience that the routine's finished. The audience laughs - we feel relieved when a routine ends so we laugh. This technique sometimes inspires an audience to applaud when the conditions are right.
It’s about me, start to finish, the whole show.
This sounds like an extra joke, but actually, it's a segue! This is what takes us from this routine into the next one, where Acaster talks about his life.
And even the segue's efficient. It's funny, so it gets an extra laugh. It also sets our expectations for the rest of the show. We needn't worry about further crowd work.
Audiences feel safe and more comfortable when they know what to expect. This is why comedians will sometimes tell the audience how long the show's likely to be, and if there are intervals. And, in this case, what the show's going to be about.
It also tips off the audience that the show is preplanned. This is particularly important for Acaster's audience to know, because he writes rich, literary comedy that rewards close attention.
*
Let me know if you enjoyed this. Maybe I'll analyse more comedy if there's any interest.
I post my own standup on Instagram, and I tour UK festivals and (increasingly) theatres. Details on my website.
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