Circuit Training 1: Flights of Fancy

It was midway through the opening para of a feature about the new series of Flight of the Conchords in a freebie magazine last week that I emitted that most stereotypical of British responses: an audible tut, on a train.

Free publications aren't exactly awash with resources at the moment so you can make allowances for the oversight, but, still, it was a bit jarring to read that Bret and Jermaine had apparently made the seismic leap from doing stand-up to achieving enormous television success directly, with no mention of the award-winning (bronze, admittedly) Radio 2 series that went before.

Now only a certain calibre of comedy anorak would seethe about such a relatively minor omission, but then that's the purpose of this new column; not to seethe, but to trace that treacherous path from stand-up circuit to studio, whether that be radio studio, television or, in a few fortunate cases, film. I started writing about comedy in the early noughties and developed an enduring fascination with the increasingly fraught nature of this transition, but remained unfathomably hopeless at predicting which of the promising new talents would make it big.

Some of those relatively recent interviewees - Jason Manford and Michael McIntyre, for example - quickly turned likeability into household-name popularity via the chat show/panel game route. Others, like the anarchic sketch troupe We Are Klang, seemed to taken several aeons to turn their Edinburgh work into a worthy television project, with an eye on the League of Gentlemen career arc. It should finally be with us soon.

But the majority have been bouncing back and forth, from popular radio shows to lowly gigs in the suburbs, through pilots that never took off, perhaps even a small but memorable sitcom role that later stuck out like a sore thumb on the online CV, alongside those appearances on The World Stands Up (Paramount, 1999). You need a thick skin to keep banging away at this business.

Thankfully the British stand-up circuit is a healthy enough beast and invariably welcomes back its prodigal sons and daughters with open arms. Indeed, a return to regular live work is often a blessed relief for the comics, who've suffered through several levels of the interminable production process and are itching to get up and tell jokes without interference (but always with a new script or treatment in the back pocket, just in case). Even your confirmed TV regulars, all those Carrs and Russells, insist that stand-up is still the day-job, with broadcasting an added bonus. And, usually, I believe them.

It's a bit different in the States, where one inspired gig at the Montreal Comedy Fest can catapult you onto the more lucrative path from sitcom to movies to global superstardom - but it's hard to go back. One Canadian comic currently plying his trade on the UK circuit moved to a log cabin in the country when his development deal with a big US network ran out, then to Wolverhampton. Extreme measures.

Over the coming weeks, then, we'll be checking in with chaps like this, who've survived that journey from circuit to studio, in one direction or another, and with those poor souls currently mired in the depths of development hell. It won't be pretty. But then prettiness is a rare commodity in comedy.

Speaking of The Conchords' old radio series, by the way, keen observers will have noticed that one of its guest stars is now appearing in the infuriating kebab-flavour Pot Noodle ad that looks suspiciously like something from, er, Flight of the Conchords. Really, Jarred Christmas, what on earth were you thinking?