What could be more disorientating for a comedian than not being able to laugh – for nine hours! – nor elicit laughter from anyone else in the room? I’ll tell you. Try all of the above on a sunny summer weekend while pretending it’s Halloween. Then force the comics to return to the scene of what one of their number, Phil Wang, calls “a cross between a gameshow and a psychological experiment”, and relive the whole ordeal for a man from the Guardian. Is it any wonder Wang, Lou Sanders, Tom Allen and others come across as a little punch-drunk 24 hours after emerging from televised captivity on the smash comedy hit Last One Laughing?
It’s the day after filming, at Elstree Studios, the show’s Halloween special which sees a unique tweak to its winning formula: contestants must not only refrain from laughter but from screaming. “Which I thought might be a non-event,” says Wang, “but it’s actually harder. I didn’t know I was a screamer. Turns out I am.” The participating comics – including paranormal obsessive Daisy May Cooper and that maestro of comedy-horror, Reece Shearsmith – seek not only to amuse each other but spook them too. Which makes sense, says host Jimmy Carr. “Laughs and screams come from the same place. There’s surprise in a joke, and there’s surprise in a jump scare. Comedy and horror mess around in the same area. It’s the same bit of your brain.”
