Beige comedians more successful for being beige

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

I nominate: Miles Jupp. Never said anything funny in his life. Can't decide from minute to minute if he's doing grumpy cynic, posh & confused, or that hopeless bloke in the pub who wants to be everyone's mate. And yet, he's on absolutely bloody everything. Never off the telly. Never out of work. Exactly which panel shows (surely the ultimate yardstick for success here) hasn't he been on? None that I can think of.

There must be the comedy equivalent of a evolutionary niche where you can survive just by being unthreatening and not doing anything too risky. These are people very probably more successful than those with actual talent. In a way, that's quite impressive.

Any others?

[Hand Solo]

Phill DOUBLE ELL Juptius

Known Talents:

* Making Clown Horn Noise
* Calling Back To Another Comedian's Previous Joke From Earlier In The Show In Place Of Just Being Funny
* Slowly Transforming Into John Waters/George Melly Hybrid

[sick as a pike]

I nominate: Miles Jupp. Never said anything funny in his life.

What? He's superb.  I even stopped him on the street in Edinburgh to tell him so.  I know it's a futile exercise disagreeing about comedy on the internet (despite that being kind of the point of this entire site) but you are wrong and I am right, so there.  I would normally attempt to justify this complex argument, but I've not been well.

[BlodwynPig]

All comedy panels, 1995 - 2020, including Bob Mortimer

[petril]

all comedians, except the ones I liked between the age of about 13 and 18, plus half the ones I liked between the age of 18 and 23. they were the good ones

[Tony Yeboah]

Lenny Beige

[Poisson Du Jour]

Recently watched an episode of Celebrity Bake Off and comedian Joel Dummet managed to be the least funny contestant, impressive given he was up against stylist Tan France, tennis player Johanna Konta and Caroline Quentin. I only remember one thing he said sort of in the field of humour, a chew/choux pun. I think I laughed more at the cancer story they play halfway through, about a young women who kept a video diary of her experience with brain cancer. She died.

[BeardFaceMan]

I quite like Miles Jupp on panel shows, it's his stand up I can't bear. He's great talking in small doses but an hour of listening to him talk? He has an incredibly dreary voice and I can't listen to about more than 10 minutes of him without it acting like a sleeping aid.

Phill DOUBLE ELL Juptius

Known Talents:

* Making Clown Horn Noise
* Calling Back To Another Comedian's Previous Joke From Earlier In The Show In Place Of Just Being Funny
* Slowly Transforming Into John Waters/George Melly Hybrid

You forgot his Chewbacca impression.

[Captain Crunch]

I nominate: Miles Jupp.

I've mentioned this before but I went to a recording of The News Quiz when he'd taken over as presenter.  I know everyone has fans but my goodness some of his are rabid.  There was a guy a few rows behind me who would erupt into unbridled HYSTERIA whenever Miles said anything, regardless of how funny it was.  He was also gasping little phrases of "oh God, brilliant" and "amazing" now and then.  A bit disturbing, and he wasn't alone.

I don't begrudge them and Radio 4 fans do have to wait a very long for good fresh meat so to speak.  I just hate him for his irritating sub-Hugh Grant mumbling than for his material. 

[Blue Jam]

Saw Miles Jupp do stand-up years back and really enjoyed it.

Also John Duggan in The Thick Of It is great, you bastards. One of my favourite stupid sitcom characters.

[Prison Biscuits]

I think Miles Jupp is fine. Especially compared to dreary things like the Widdicombes, the Becketts and the Kumars who aren't even beige, they're gases, floating around cackling and shrieking but never coming close to contributing anything themselves. I haven't bothered with panel shows since about two series of Taskmaster ago, they're like only listening to free CDs from Uncut instead of buying albums by bands you like.

[Blue Jam]

Ricky Gervais is pretty beige for a supposedly edgy comedian. He's just edgy enough to convince his edgelord fans that they're watching a genuinely dangerous and outrageous outsider, while remaining inoffensive enough to have become a multimillionare who keeps getting invited back to the Golden Globes. Those edgelord fans would probably clutch their pearls and faint if they saw Jerry Sadowitz or Chris Morris hosting.

Sorry, I just can't help myself when it comes to Gervais-bashing.

[the]

(Bleary rambling post alert)

There must be the comedy equivalent of a evolutionary niche where you can survive just by being unthreatening and not doing anything too risky. These are people very probably more successful than those with actual talent.

I feel this has much to do with the volume of different types of work.

If you're still filling out application forms with "Occupation: Stand up comedian", but your writing & performing of stand up material has long been outweighed by panel show appearances in a ratio of 10:1, then are you a stand up comedian in effect?

I imagine a lot of career trajectories go something like this:

- Do little stand-up spots on open circuit
- Do something at Edinburgh
- Get noticed
- Get big agent
- Agent books you on panel show
- If you don't bomb then agent books you on more panel shows
- Thank god you don't really have to go trawling round clubs anymore or writing material
- Take foot off accelerator and coast on more panel shows and Radio 4
- Agent suggests it might be good for your profile if you write a bit more and go on Live At The Apollo wearing something shiny
- Do more panel shows
- Cash in on high profile by doing big tour of 90 minute show
- More panel shows

I'm not suggesting that you don't have to write much material or do much graft before you get to the 'feet under the panel show table' stage (I'm sure you do have to hit it hard for a while), but my observation is that the point where your profile gets big is usually when the time you're putting in on panel shows (ie. media work) is already outweighing your stand up activities (ie. live work). Then you do high profile appearances and the odd big tour off the back of that profile.

So I find it very difficult to judge whether any high-profile panel show botherer is worth their comedy salt by looking at their stand-up after that point - I'd want to judge them on their stand-up from just before they got big to assess whether they really had something in the first place or not.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Rufus Hound.

The type of guy that would be popular and the funniest guy in the room at sixth form, maybe being in the least shit college band for a bit and having absorbed and memorised bits of US pop culture, immediately leaping above his peers in the pecking order.

I understand how people like that are catapulted because their persona reflects other people's beige lives back at them. Sarah Millican for example just reflects the banalities and inadequacies of being average back at people in a sing-songy north east accent.

That said, Rufus seems ok as a person and I imagine he is decent to talk to and get on with if you avoided ever asking 'so do you really think you're national TV funny?'

I remember him once on Buzzcocks attacking Peter Kay for "having remembered things", but at least Peter Kay did actually have a few years of genuinely capturing the zeitgeist and keenly understanding why bits of life around them were funny. He is the inverse of Kay, who really did write things of worth and deserve to be involved in comedy nationally for a bit, but is an unbearable hateful cunt.

[Brundle-Fly]

Miles Jupp was very funny on RHLSTP. 

[Sebastian Cobb]

Also John Duggan in The Thick Of It is great, you bastards. One of my favourite stupid sitcom characters.

Please, JD, he's rebranded.

[olliebean]

Started watching one of Jupp's things a couple of years back, I think on Next Up or somewhere, but he just seemed to be going on about cricket for ages and I couldn't be arsed with that.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Rufus Hound.

Rufus Hound is a good one. I can picture him, but I can't. Despite the fact he's on everything. The prime exact really.

Sarah Millican for example just reflects the banalities and inadequacies of being average back at people in a sing-songy north east accent.

Perfectly put. Definitely agreeing with this. Developing the point, I guess you could say these sort of comics are like friends. Talent is intimidating, off-putting. Beige people are your mates. You can join in and have a laugh too. No one is going to judge you for making a clanger.

I guess the only time it grates is when they're outdone by people who aren't comics themselves, as someone pointed out earlier.

This seems to be a regular thing on HIGNFY: visiting stand-up comics who are significantly less funny the politicians and writers they occasionally have on. This may in fact be why I'm picking on Miles Jupp at this very moment. Saw him on HIGNFY the other week and just couldn't understand his presence there. He was just a sort of foghorn noise emitting from a sofa. Didn't seem to be any reason for him being there, other than to fill some sort of quota - "Make sure there's at least one beigy on this week's episode, alright?"

[the]

Saw him on HIGNFY the other week and just couldn't understand his presence there. He was just a sort of foghorn noise emitting from a sofa. Didn't seem to be any reason for him being there, other than to fill some sort of quota - "Make sure there's at least one beigy on this week's episode, alright?"

In terms of quotas, doesn't the muscle of the big comedy agents have a lot to do with the presence of their acts per show?

[bgmnts]

Jon Richardson is surely the apex of beige.

[Captain Z]

Josh Widdecombe?

Is Miles Jupp the one that does that "give me your money/what, all of it?" joke about being mugged? If so it's one of the few times a specific joke from a comedy set has stuck in my head for so long.

[jobotic]

Jon Richardson is surely the apex of beige.

Wouldn't want him as a friend though.

[Dewt]

Jon Richardson is surely the apex of beige.

The thing is, even calling him beige is awarding him something, because that's what he strives for. He's something much worse - a man constantly screeching "look at how beige I am! Isn't it FUNNY?".

no, it's not. He's not actually beige, he's a perpetual student flatshare guy who thinks that playing up to the idea of being boring is comedy gold


fucking hate him

[Misspent Boners]

Most beige comedians seem like they're probably really nice, but just aren't funny and usually become annoying through over saturation...particularly your panel show/comedy roadshow regulars like the aforementioned Jon Richardson or Romesh Ranganathan. Romesh is in too mant things, he has about twenty vehicles on the BBC and Sky Atlantic and it's just too fucking much. Also, and this is probably me being a bell end, but I hate it when people call him Rom..it just feels overly familiar. Rom the nations fucking son.

[sick as a pike]

Josh Widdecombe?
Is Miles Jupp the one that does that "give me your money/what, all of it?" joke about being mugged?

"It might take a while, most of it's tied up in land."

[Captain Z]

The paperwork will be a nightmare.

[typeforty]

Miles Jupp peaked with making yoghurt pot bras for Miss Hoolie.

[Hand Solo]

In terms of quotas, doesn't the muscle of the big comedy agents have a lot to do with the presence of their acts per show?

Yeah, they sell them off in package deals. If you want this funny one, you'll have to take 3 of my shit ones on other episodes etc.

Netflix obviously must get the same bum deal from all the various film studios which is why there's so much unwatchable shite on there.

[Brundle-Fly]

The OP title suggests that these 'beige' or for a more accurate term, mainstream comedians, were more subversive, deconstructing or edgier in the past and sold out for broader appeal. Sean Lock? Who is a current non-beige UK comedian (other than Lee, Kitson or S****itz?)

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

I always thought Jon Richardson was the 'clever' arch one you can find in any pub in Manchester. Intelligent but not quite bookish, almost on the verge of being an outcast, but fitting in with fleece and cheque shirt. Sardonic comments with the arms folded. Probably has some contrarian whim, like riding a 1950s bicycle. But not in such a way that he stands out, not like a hipster. Have to take a good look at it first. Lives with his Mum. But Mum's ill. Can't really pull him up on it. Not getting on but getting away with it.

You know the sort I mean.