Tom O'Connor

Comedy losses 2021

Remembering the people in the comedy world who died in 2021, including Sean Lock, Jethro and Paul Ritter.

Obituary: Tom O'Connor, popular comedian and TV host

Tom O'Connor could cross the generations with gentle humour and transform the most mundane quiz show into ratings-high television.

Tom O'Connor obituary

Comedian and quiz show host who was propelled to stardom by winning Opportunity Knocks.

"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.

'Cruising is the gig to have,' says black American comic Percy Crews 2, 'Cruising, now, is like the new Las Vegas.' No, he's not talking about searching for an anonymous fuck; the third and final episode of BBC2's doc series about the comedy industry focuses on the lives of cruise-ship comedians, and the big bucks they can earn at sea.

Through interviews with old-school entertainers like Nicholas Parsons and Tom O'Connor, we learn what's required to keep the passengers amused, and how being aboard with your audience means you're on stage even when on deck. What's the secret? 'It's getting as old as most of the passengers,' jokes one-man-band performer Bruce Thompson. But the cruise industry has inevitably changed over the last 30 years. Those loyal older passengers still want the safe veterans, but a new younger audience are coming aboard, and that's where Percy Crews 2 comes in, playing edgier, late-night shows on the more party-centric ships.

But we know this goes on, and if we didn't, it's not exactly a huge surprise. Interesting enough, but not the eye-opener we were hoping for.

"Cruising is like the new Las Vegas," says one comedian of the $3 billion industry. This final episode of the series about how comedians make money from corporate gigs follows Wigan comic Jimmy O as he makes his debut at sea. Comics may have turned their noses up at cruising in the past but with the potential to treble their earnings, many are now taking to the waves. Indeed, Tom O'Connor says that 40 per cent of his income comes from working on the ships.