Shared Laughter
I have loved live comedy for many years.
Sitting in a moist, curtained room above a pub in the middle of the day whilst there is bright, streaming sunshine outside. Tucked inside a jam-packed tent at a festival, with the bass from another stage seeping in. With new men (oh the stress! Will he laugh at the jokes I hate?) or old friends (who know what makes me laugh as surely as they know my favourite dinner), a pint of the coldest lager to my lips, or a cup of lukewarm coffee to my chest, I am always there with the hope of one thing - the deliciously sweet release of shared laughter.
When it works - when the performer pulls up the rug of their everyday life to reveal what is normally hidden, there are few things that can match the feeling of joy, of recognition, when you realise that much of their sweepings are the very same as your own.
When the UK lockdown finally kicked in, and we weren’t allowed out anymore, like everyone else in the country, every single plan I had was put on ice. Not just the big things that have been planned for months in advance: Glastonbury. Machynlleth comedy festival. A trip to Japan. But cliched, small things that I didn’t realise you could miss so much: scampi fries and a pint of cider with my best friend. A comedy night that costs a fiver.
In reaction to his cancelled plans, my brother Jake did probably what many other millennials did around the same time: he set up a ‘virtual pub’. It was essentially a WhatsApp group - a place to hang out with thirty or so friends when the real locals weren’t allowed to open anymore. He called it ‘’The Covid Arms.‘’
I joined. From the off, I enjoyed the usual barrage of messages that a group like that brings. Links to twitter pointing out Boris’ latest ludicrous behaviour, ridiculously hipster beer subscription service, pictures of peoples’ dogs wearing hats.
I rang Jake and told him I thought it would be funny to have some live entertainment in the Covid Arms. To turn up one day with a link to a livestream of some A-grade stand-up.
On a whim, I asked my school friend Kiri Pritchard-Mclean (who happens to be one of my favourite comedians) if she’d be up for doing it. On the strength of very little evidence that the production wouldn’t be an utter shambles, she said yes. What was more, she somehow managed to convince some of her comedy friends that our idea had legs too. We added a couple of gems ourselves and all of a sudden, we had a banging line-up.
We thought we could probably charge £2 a ticket to join the livestream and give the money to some people who really needed it. Last minute, Jake had the clever idea of using Zoom so some of our pub audience could chat with the comedians - adding what we would later realise was a whiff of Noel’s House Party to proceedings.
By 7pm on the evening of the performance, we’d raised £13,500 for the trussell trust. Our Covid Arms whatsapp group was a little surprised.
Instead of 30, over three thousand people - all over the world - logged on to watch. The first night was simultaneously absolutely hilarious, and absolutely a technical nightmare. There is an excellent photo of Jake sitting on the edge of his seat as YouTube removed our stream for the fifth time due to the sheer extent of swearing. Kiri turned on her camera too early and three thousand people watched her doing her hair. And all the while I was frantically trying to reply to several hundred people at once who were emailing asking where the stream kept disappearing to.
Since then we’ve done thirteen shows. I’m happy to say we've nailed the tech. We’ve had sets from Frankie Boyle, Sara Pascoe, Nish Kumar, Aisling Bea and a whole host of impressive circuit acts who all deserve their own tv show. We’ve broken a world record. Collectively, we’ve sworn more profusely than I knew was possible. We’ve raised over £100k for food banks.
And that thing that both the audience and the performers are always chasing - that live endorphin release of laughter - has returned week and after week, despite the fact that we’re not all tucked into a room together. Performers have adjusted to telling jokes essentially to themselves in the mirror, and audiences have begun to enjoy watching with slippers and no bra on.
The audience have become every bit as much a part of the show as the performers. We run a competition every week - show us the creepiest thing in your house, recreate your favourite artwork, share the worst lockdown haircuts around. Kiri zooms straight into peoples’ houses and we are inundated with tweets about their shelves, their pets, their cocktails. It speaks to the nosey parkers that we all are at heart. And it’s also an amazing place for people who can’t or don’t like going out all that much at the best of times. At the end of the show Jake invites people to share their cameras and the livestream pans out to show dozens of tiny, blurry rectangles each containing one or two people dancing alongside each other.
Some lovely souls have tuned in for every single show without fail. You get as used to familiar faces as you do in the local pub. Together, we have created a kind, supportive, jolly community that has made many people more cheerful.
Jess Lea-Wilson
You can also find Jess here.