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WHY TELEVISION SHUNS STAND-UP

Television executives like to use comedians for anything but stand-up, writes OLLIE WILSON.

COMEDIANS are a versatile bunch. They have to be if they want to get on to television. For TV executives are increasingly marginalising stand-up comedy.

One only has to look at the TV schedules to see this. The five terrestrial channels' run-downs are littered with the names of comedians - but very few are allowed to do stand-up in their slots.

In one typical recent week, Paul Merton was in the long-running comedy news quiz Have I Got News For You?; Jim Davidson presented veteran people show The Generation Game; Craig Charles hosted the offbeat technical entertainment show Robot Wars and Rory McGrath and Irish comic Patrick Keilty appeared on the sports quiz, They Think It's All Over.

Graham Norton and Frank Skinner were in talk show formats, although admittedly Skinner was allowed a little stand-up, while nowadays Norton appears to prefer ringing up perverts to doing comedy routines.

Another Irishman, Ardal O'Hanlon, was in yet another rerun of the situation comedy Father Ted, as the cotton-headed Father Dougal Mcguire, a persona actually not so far removed from his naive comedy persona.

And a whole host of not-particularly-funny performers unleashed their so-called "satirical humour on the day's events" in three editions (plus a "best of" repeat) of Channel 4's feeble 11 O'Clock Show.

So where was the stand-up comedy? To seek it out, you had to look to ten-past-midnight on Saturday night/Sunday morning on BBC1, for a half-an-hour show featuring Perrier Award winner Tommy Tiernan, New Yorker Cory Kahaney, Andy Parsons (half of the Parsons and Naylor double-act), and oddball Simon Munnery as the League Against Tedium.

There was only 30 minutes of pure stand-up in hundreds of hours of programming across five channels. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out that TV executives do not rate stand-up.

And yet it is an uncomfortable issue for them.

There is no doubt that television talent scouts get excited by the comedians making wave each year at the Edinburgh Fringe.

But they are always looking for some talent other than the one that makes these performers a success in the first place.

TV's latest ruse is to use stand-up comedians as pundits - fielding them in slots that would previously have been taken by media journalists, critics or academics.

Paul Merton and one-time stand-up Helen Lederer were recently featured as experts talking about the last episode of the classic BBC comedy One Foot In The Grave - just because they had played minor roles in it.

The documentary, succinctly-entitled I Don't Believe It - The One Foot In The Grave Story - suffered badly for this approach, with their relatively-uninteresting comments usurping any real attempt at an objective account of how the show became a runaway ratings success and darling of the tabloid press.

Another example is Phill Jupitus who frequently appears on television doing just about anything but stand-up comedy.

The big boy of stand-up is seen presenting pop nostalgia shows - calling on the assistance of other stand-ups working as pundits.

And he also prats around with fellow stand-ups Sean Hughes and Mark Lamarr on the never-ending game show Never Mind The Buzzcocks, a cross between a music quiz and goodness knows what.

You cannot blame the stand-ups. Even successful comedians cannot afford to turn down well-paid television work. But wouldn't it be nice for their fans to see these top-of-the-tree comedians actually doing stand-up on TV for a change?

And makers of popular documentaries should remember that there are problems with using comedians as pundits.

The process of writing comedy is very different from criticism.

A comedian is aiming to amuse and entertain often at any cost to his subject matter or himself.

Performance and delivery are more important than veracity, research and genuine in-depth knowledge of a subject.

So Paul Merton takes a cameo role in the final edition of One Foot in the Grave - and, suddenly, he and everyone else who has ever appeared in the show's long, long run is regarded as an authority on it.

Good pundits know their area of expertise inside out and are constantly updating their knowledge with research. But to many entertainers - used to busking it on stage - 'research' is an alien word. They are highly unlikely to read up on a topic before spouting off on it.

From a light entertainment producer's viewpoint, the logic of filling a programme with celebrity names is easy to understand: it makes it easier to get a show commissioned, looks good in the listings and may even pull in extra viewers.

However, it tends to turn a documentary on a popular topic into a tribute show, with a mutual-appreciation society of performers mouthing well-enunciated anecdotes that tell you virtually nothing.

In a sense, this is part of the wider malady in our society: the worship of the cult of celebrity. If you are a famous comedian, you are almost certain to be commissioned by some limp-brained life-style supplement editor to write a column on the basis of your celebrity, not your talent.

For the same reasons, you may also be booked to appear on the BBC's Question Time, open supermarkets, launch dot-com disasters, back charity appeals you know nothing about, cook on television, and publicly support safe sex, although down at the Groucho Club that might be the last thing on your mind.

Comedians should ask themselves: Is the point of doing stand-up to make people laugh, or to host fatuous TV game shows and express your opinions on topics you know little about.

Perhaps, the versatility of comedians is a curse rather than a blessing.

Copyright 2001, Ollie Wilson