Product testing

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Tuesday 4th October 2016

Poke around the cobwebbed corners of my house and you'll find a fair bit of evidence that someone geeky about comedy lives here.

Still in its protective polystyrene in the larder (it's an old house) is a North Norfolk Digital mug, as used by Alan Partridge (pictured). Elsewhere in the kitchen there's a John Shuttleworth mug too. Somewhere upstairs there's a famous-comic sports bag I'm giving to someone as a weird birthday present soon, and scattered pretty much everywhere else are all the DVDs, albums, posters, badges and slightly-pretentious pamphlets I've acquired from a wide array of comics over the years. Was comedy merchandising always a thing?

TV spin-offs have probably always been around, and I had a good chat with Micky Flanagan in a toilet once about our mutual appreciation for old comedy albums. But merch has usually been more associated with musicians: even relatively unknown bands will sell t-shirts to bring in extra quids after gigs. Meanwhile bigger acts have extended the brand, beyond their fanbase too. Legendary rockers Motorhead produced a range of guitar-friendly headphones, there's Motorhead wine, whisky and beer, and even after lead-singer Lemmy's passing you can play a Motorhead game via Spin And Win.

For today's touring comics, though, the post-show merchandise stand has become a significant part of the business. Even fairly big names will often hang about after gigs to flog and sign stuff. It's a great way to get acquainted with your audience, if that idea isn't your worst nightmare, and to bypass the middle-man with your CDs and DVDs.

Selling directly to happy, tipsy new fans is also an effective method for shifting those books that didn't exactly fly off the shelves. I recall a couple of years ago my brother whipping out a tenner for an autobiography of Stephen K Amos after that gig had rounded off an enjoyable afternoon in several pubs. Not long afterwards he was most unimpressed when I found a huge wad of those books in an Edinburgh pound shop. For a pound, obviously.

Merch isn't nearly so forthcoming from comics without much radio/TV presence, but dig through the post-Edinburgh bag that I still haven't properly unpacked yet and you'll find a varied heap of promo material from a varied heap of stand-ups. Most of them are badges, given out after shows as a thanks-for-coming (and also a good way to get the word-of-mouth going). Although admittedly a certain American comic did try to make me pay a pound for one last year, which led to some rather different word-of-mouth.

Occasionally there are more interesting items. Liam Williams and Richard Herring have both produced nice brochure/programmes for their Edinburgh shows over the years, Herring as a regular fund-raising project for Scope (donators get their names printed in it), while in 2013 Williams put together a suitably highbrow "sort-of-pamphlet" called Commonplace: "18 short sections that catalogue the everyday, the trite, and the private," as he put it. It's one of the few printed items to feature on the Invisible Dot's cool, Factory Records-style numbered catalogue: id 225.

By far the most interesting promo item I was handed at this year's Fringe - the most interesting thing I've ever been handed at the Fringe, in fact - was from someone flyering for Nicci Take (aka Miss Take) and her show Trans America: To Pee or Not to Pee. It was a She-Wee, 'the original female urine device', which was novel. And useful. Well, I did promise my other half that I'd bring her back a nice present.