Josh Widdicombe on Hypothetical and being 10 seconds away from being cancelled

Virgin Radio

24 Feb 2021, 11:11

The comedian and presenter joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about his TV show, the thrill of cancel culture and missing a live audience.

As a professional funny man, is he always switched 'on'? He said: "No, I'm not always on. I can't stand people who are always on. I think that's just tiring. I think the worst thing is when you're trying to think comedically you're probably laughing the least. 

"When you're writing for a show or something you're taking it very seriously. If you go to a TV company and you see some people laughing working on a comedy show they're not talking about the show, they're talking about something else completely because there's no laughs when you're talking about the show."

On the public offering up their one-liners, he said: “If someone says 'I've got joke for you' I’d rather a meteorite hit the world than the conversation continue. 'I have a joke for you' is a nightmare. Obviously, I'm polite enough to go through the charade of the joke."

Filming without a live studio audience loses the magic. He explained: “That's the most exciting thing about it. We've been doing it without a studio audience for the last six months or whatever and you’re far less nervous because you know there's 20 people in the room that work on the show - if they don't laugh, then you're in serious trouble. 

“There's no tension, the excitement has gone. At 9.55pm on a Friday night, I'm not nervous anymore. I do miss that.”

On success in comedy, he said: "I think the thing with comedians is that the further you go on in your career, the risk is less and less. There's this weird kind of situation where the toughest gigs where you get most humiliated are also the ones you do when you are the worst at comedy, because that's when you start out.

"As you go on in comedy you get your audience and people know who you are and you get better at it, and then it gets less and less risky.

"With Hypothetical one of the exciting things we have about it is no one knows what they're doing so there is a risk element to it. It could all go wrong. 

“Live is more fun obviously because you have to go with something, you have to make something work. With editing you'll be doing stuff and you'll think, this isn't going out so I can say whatever I want.

"Whereas live, obviously, this is it. The beauty of live is you're only ever 10 seconds away from being cancelled. That's the thrill you're never going to have on an editied TV show."

Hypothetical is on tonight at 10pm on Dave