Game for a Laugh
It may come as a surprise to those millennials who've only ever been to big shiny-floor comedy shows, but the concept of stand-ups playing huge arenas is a relatively recent one. Nowadays any new comic having a good gig probably allows themselves a little pipe dream about packing out the 02 one day - could happen - but that wasn't even a blip on a funnyperson's radar back in the 1980s. Back then the big ambition was to get a quiz show.
That still happens of course - Lee Mack, Michael McIntyre, Jason Manford and Alan Carr all have primetime game shows - but that's just their latest gig, well into lengthy TV careers. A few decades ago any kind of game show would be the be-all and end-all, even a daytime one, as regular telly was hard to come by. We're not sure terrestrial TV has the same cache for up-and-coming comics these days, but you do wonder if a new generation could do a new generation of show.
Popular games like Plinko, which famously appeared on The Price Is Right in the 1980s, can now be found online. Meanwhile on channels like Twitch there are thousands of viewers watching people play computer games - including a good few comedians who took it up during the lockdowns - and it's not a huge stretch to imagine a hybrid of the two. Playing online casino games is already pretty diverting, but imagine doing it while a decent stand-up - in a little box in the corner - builds up the tension over the top, and an audience watches on.
It's a fair bet that lots of comedians keen to get into presenting would leap at the chance to take a punt online and channel Leslie Crowther - the former comic who presented the UK version of The Price Is Right. And Crackerjack. And Whose Baby. And Runaround. And Stars In Their Eyes, before handing it over to Matthew Kelly. That's quite a varied career, just in game shows.
One reason that this idea comes to mind right now is that a varied array of comedians have popped up advertising lotteries and gaming sites over the last year or so, either in person or via voiceovers. So that droll tone of voice clearly works in this setting. Although having mentioned new comics channelling 1980s game show legends (comedian Ben Alborough's latest show involves him literally pretending to be Blankety Blank host Terry Wogan, for example) the slight worry is that these shows might cut out the middle-man and go straight for the originals.
If we're just talking about a talking head in the corner introducing the show and adding pithy comments over the action, you could probably conjure that up with artificial intelligence these days; or you probably will be able to in the near future, anyway. With the right permissions and some clever use of an old audio-visual back catalogue your online casino show could be hosted by a Bob Monkhouse, or a Jimmy Tarbuck, or a Tom O'Connor, or a Larry Grayson. Maybe even a Bruce Forsyth. If you played your cards right.
Or if the right permissions aren't forthcoming, there's always the old football video game technique of using their likenesses anyway and just changing the name. Look out for Timmy Jarbuck, or Des Lawson, maybe even Dim Javidson. Or maybe not.
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