Elis James has been booked in to play a prestigious gig at the Royal Albert Hall – entirely without his knowledge.

His Radio 5 Live co-presenter John Robins and fellow comic Josh Widdicombe conspired to hire out the historic 5,300-seat venue for the show in secret.

And on being ambushed by the shock news while on air, James protested that he hadn’t got nearly enough material for the show. Having only recently returned to performing stand-up in English after a break of eight years, he lamented: ’I’ve only got 25 minutes. I’ve got an hour in Welsh…’

The prank came after the Welsh comic made an idle boast to Widdicombe following his 15-minute English-language comeback in January.

The pair were waiting for taxis after a work-in-progress show at Always Be Comedy in Kennington, when Widdicombe asked James if his set had gone well enough for him to consider taking his next tour to the London Palladium.

James joked: 'Ideally, I'd do the Royal Albert Hall but I'm worried about the financial split.'

 

 

 

 

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Well, now he's had his bluff called, with the cavernous London venue booked for March 24 next year for a comedy night shared between James, Robins and  their producer Dave Masterman.

The blurb promises 'for one night only, the podcast heavyweights / stand-up comedy middleweights [coming] to the Hall to bring you their hit show with all your favourite features, and, of course, Producer Dave.

'But the fun doesn't end there … Have you heard that Elis James is back?! After making his return to English-language stand-up earlier this year in front of 40 people in Kennington, he made the mistake of telling Josh Widdicombe that he should probably book the Royal Albert Hall.

'So, we did it for him (and without telling him to be fair). Expect nothing less than perfection as Elis closes out the second half with his unique brand of West-Walean anecdotalism.'

Masterman said he had experienced ‘genuine concern’ as to what James’ reaction would be – texting James' comedian wife, Isy Suttie, 'three or four times across the last five months', asking 'when this is revealed, will he just be absolutely livid and actually not want to do it?'

Happily, James confirmed he was ‘excited' – but needed 'to read 20 pages of my cycling book to calm down as my heart rate is much higher than it usually is.'

He added: 'I really genuinely dislike surprises, which is why they work so well on the show, because John loves to surprise me. He ramps up this smirk from about five minutes before he tells me what it is, which just means that your mind plays tricks.

'So I was like, okay, I'm getting divorced live on the show. I'm getting served my divorce papers for content... [Or] we would do test results and I'm really ill.'

James previously appeared at the Royal Albert Hall in 2023 as a guest of Ed Gamble and James Acaster for a live recording of their Off Menu podcast.

Tickets for Elis and John: Pressure Is A Privilege go on general sale on June 26 here.

-by Jay Richardson