Though Jack Whitehall has a Hollywood film career, his standup comedy didn’t quite take off Stateside.
And he has an interesting explanation for why. His agent arranged a few gigs in LA, where he could have gone down a storm, but alas...
“I got to the address and thought: ‘This can’t be right,’” he recalls, perusing the various erotic items hanging in the windows. “Because it was a sex shop. A sex shop in the middle of West Hollywood.”
He made a polite phone call to his agent. “No, we didn’t mention that,” his agent admitted to him of the venue - which, it transpired, featured a “quirky comedy night” out the back.
“There was no stage,” recalls Jack on the Life’s A Beach podcast. “It was like 30 seats set out in the middle of an active sex shop with people looking around.
“My ego is moderate but there are standards that I have, and I am afraid this is the threshold to tell them my plane got cancelled / I never arrived / I perished in the ocean.”
To make matters worse, staff clocked Jack and asked if he was there for the comedy show. Panicked, he said no.
“So I had to browse,” he cringes. “I did some window shopping, and then walked out and went home.
“I was like: ‘I think that’s it for my American career.’”
A US career ended in a sex shop. It’s lucky he wasn’t better known.
Do you have a story to sell? Get in touch with us at webcelebs@mirror.co.uk or call us direct at 0207 29 33033
