For new R4 show

Comedians are to share stories of their worst gigs in a one-off Radio 4 programme.

Circuit veterans Jo Brand, Tim Clark, Jack Dee, Mike Gunn, Milton Jones, Lucy Porter and Ian Stone will all detail their nightmare shows in I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down.

According to the BBC, anecdotes include ‘realising too late that your material is completely inappropriate for the audience, finding the crowd was expecting someone else [and] having to deal with the heckler from hell.’

The format of comedians talking about their worst gigs is currently a popular one, with Viv Groskop’s live shows The Night I Died and the Edinburgh Fringe show Comedy Deaths starting on Saturday.

Presented by musical comic Richard Morton, the Radio 4 show airs at 4pm on August 19.

Meanwhile, comics also feature in the storytelling series Comic Fringes, which launches on Radio 4 on August 23. The quarter-hour afternoon show, recorded at the Edinburgh Fringe, opens with Jenny Eclair delivering a monologue as an actress looking back at her career. The next two episodes feature So You Think You’re Funny winner Aisling Bea and Scottish comic Sanjeev Kohli.   

Published: 1 Aug 2013