The Stand-Up Archive: Interview with Dr Oliver Double

The British Stand-Up Comedy Archive's Dr Oliver Double on archiving something as ephemeral as live performance

Feature by Ben Venables | 06 Nov 2015

A common sight at a stand-up gig is a set-list inked onto the back of the comedian's hand. Indeed, Stewart Lee's inky paw is pictured on the artwork for his 41st Best Stand-Up Ever DVD, and on the recording Lee is shown washing the list away at the end of the night. Live performance is experienced more than it is preserved –  for most of the history of stand-up comedy, anything like a written record may as well have been washed down the sink.

"It can disappear very early," says Oliver Double, "Phill Jupitus was talking about his show Ready, Jedi, Go, which is about the first Star Wars films. He hasn't got any scripts or recordings. It's just gone."

Dr Double is curator of the Stand-up Archive, Head of Drama at the University of Kent and author of several renowned books on comedy. After years as a stand-up, Double pursued his love of the art into academia. However, while researching his PhD he found there was very little to go on, in terms of academic material or sources.

"It is tricky," he says, "because if you study Shakespeare or even contemporary performance art there are a lot of publications – shelves and shelves of books and journals. Whereas with comedic performance there's not the recognition, or perhaps the respect that other areas of theatre have.

"It's quite good in a way though because it's like going into virgin snow – you can create your own approach."

Double found himself collecting obscure cassettes, old press clippings and obsolete formats... anything that he could find: "To get involved with primary research in stand-up, you have to learn to ferret things out."

However, this ferreting is becoming much easier thanks to the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive.

Origins of the Stand-Up Archive

The story of the Stand-Up Archive really begins with Linda Smith, the late comedian who, on Room 101, once requested adult readers of the Harry Potter series to conceal J.K. Rowling's books in something less socially embarrassing, such as pornography. An essential performer at the Edinburgh Fringe – where she is still remembered through the Loving Linda gala at the Assembly Rooms – Smith died of ovarian cancer in early 2006. Two years ago her archive was donated to the University of Kent: "We have everything from certificates she won at school, diaries, to post-it notes of set-lists, radio scripts, all kinds of different things."

From Smith's collection the archive has broadened. Political comedian and playwright Mark Thomas has added a collection and Robin Ince has even donated puppets of himself and Josie Long – among other artefacts. In addition, Double has branched out into all varieties of stand-up and related artforms, such as with ventriloquist Nina Conti and punk poet Atila the Stockbroker. Furthermore, Double often finds he has significant material on his hands:

"Tony Allen [a pioneering alternative comedian] gave us some recordings. One was from his first ever stand-up show in the beginning of April 1979, and that date – if you are a comedy nerd – is remarkable because it is before the Comedy Store opened. Though many people would say the Comedy Store is a starting point of modern day stand-up, this recording from a pub in Oval is recognisably modern. It's on a cassette and transcribed from reel to reel so the quality is good and you can hear every word spoken. I listened to it on a train on my laptop and my jaw was dropping. Apart from Tony, I must be one of the only people who have heard it."

Recently, archivist Elspeth Millar started ensuring websites and social media accounts relating to comedy were also preserved. This special digital collection is a part of the British Library's UK Web Archive. Along with broadsheet sections and comedians' sites, are comedy hubs such as Chortle, Beyond the Joke and also regionally specific sites, such as the excellent Giggle Beats. Millar also selected The Skinny's Comedy section to be part of the digital plans, something we were proud to discover just ahead of our 10th anniversary.


More from Comedy:

 “There’s nothing really edgy in comedy any more” – Doug Stanhope

 Newsjack's Nish Kumar talks leftwing comedy and the BBC


In contrast to the relative scarcity of historic material, the digital counterpart has everything related to stand-up on the internet to draw upon. It's no wonder they need a curator. But, away from the big name tour DVDs, full recordings of stand-up shows, transcripts and in-depth analyses are still a rarity. Yet, there are exceptions.

"Go Faster Stripe is a brilliant example of an indie comedy label that captures the work of people that wouldn't be captured otherwise," says Double. "If it wasn't for that label we might not have a video of Stewart Lee's 90s Comedian, which in my opinion is one of the most important shows of the last 10 years." Lee is also something of an exception in another way: his 2012 book How I Escaped My Certain Fate almost acts as a mini-archive, containing detailed annotations alongside the transcripts of three of his shows, which serve to lead the reader down various rabbit holes of interest.

"I've read that book two or three times – the footnotes are standalone pieces of writing. A 'rabbit hole of interest' is an apt description, because with Stewart Lee it can be difficult to know at first what level he's engaging us on. In his stand-up he is constantly moving between different levels of irony and straightforwardness. Here, is a proper analysis of his own work and what lay behind it – but also the act carries on by another means."

"Stewart Lee's and also Steve Martin's book [Born Standing Up] are the closest we've come to anything like the [books and journals] other areas of performance have."

Vaudeville and Music Hall

Of course, the archive is not simply an academic exercise. A better understanding of stand-up history would help add to the debate on such minor quibbles as to when and where it started in the first place. As Double explains: "William Cook, who was one of the most pioneering comedy journalists, did a documentary series on American stand-ups and he made a point in that it's one of the great American inventions – but there are lots of different starting points in the primordial slime of stand-up.

"In America, around the 1880s, for example, there was vaudeville. There was a role called the monologist, which is kind of akin to a stand-up comedian. It's hard to tell when the monologist became a big part of that tradition. However, in UK music hall – which started thirty years earlier – a [comedic] patter developed alongside comedic songs.

"What we know is that Dan Leno was around from 1860 to 1904 and just after he died there was a biography of him that said he affected the shift from comic song to comic patter. So, you could make an argument for Dan Leno being the first stand-up. I think there are multiple starting points to look in to. I don't think Cook's argument is ludicrous by the way, but I think Britain has a claim alongside the States to stand-ups' origins."

What's more, when comedy is not included or covered in the kind of depth of other art forms we miss appreciating and understanding the role stand-up plays in responding to – or perhaps articulating – social, political and cultural events. Sometimes, Double adds, this reveals more about people than we'd expect:

"I once wrote a piece about Max Miller, and a lot of his material is innuendo about extra-marital sex. Now, if you look at mass observation projects and when people are asked about infidelity, people of the time came out with things like, 'I don't agree with it, people are like animals'. But, if it was such a rare and exotic thing outside of wedlock, then why is it so funny when Max Miller talks about it? There is something interesting going on there, comedy becoming a kind of trap of social attitudes."

While stand-ups may seem to talk about their own lives, they often tell us more about our own.


Read more about The Stand-Up Archive here

http://www.oliverdouble.com