Richard Sykes
Press clippings
"I don't disturb you when you're working, do I?" snaps stand-up comic Jimmy O at a Comedy Store heckler. "I don't come in the alleyway and knock the cocks out of your mouth."
Having honed his craft on the Northern club circuit, Jimmy is attempting to move into the lucrative cruise ship business where the atmosphere is a lot less adversarial, but the audience is older and more conservative in its tastes.
"I'm not happy with any shades of blue," warns Richard Sykes, cruise director of the Ocean Countess as she navigates the Hebrides. "Also, please don't abuse the passengers."
Jimmy will have to tailor his material accordingly. But the question is, will he have any material left?
Funny Business followed Jimmy on-board his new, floating stage, as well as exploring the phenomenal growth of an industry in which variety acts - and comics in particular - are in big demand.
The programme interviewed bookers, agents and veteran performers such as Tom O'Connor and Nicholas Parsons, who all expressed enormous enthusiasm for this once-derided but now burgeoning home for live entertainment. Meanwhile, they acknowledged the fundamental problem facing the industry - how to appeal to a younger, edgier market without alienating the established clientele.
Hired to test the waters but without making waves, so to speak, Jimmy O is on something of a hiding to nothing, but his act doesn't do him any favours. Witty, personable and charming among the passengers on deck, Jimmy sacrifices all three to a stage persona that isn't so much slow burn as catatonic.
He gets laughs, but not many, and cruise director Richard is further enraged at being short-changed by 25 minutes for a 45-minute slot. Which, given Jimmy O's speed of delivery, translates into about ten minutes of actual material. His booking is immediately terminated with a ruthlessness Captain Bligh would have approved of.
Harry Venning, The Stage, 1st March 2013