We are only a couple of years away from the centenary of the moment when Scottish inventor John Logie Baird broadcast live television for the first time via the BBC. For the first two decades of TV’s existence, the technology to pre-record shows didn’t exist, and so comedy was dominated by revues and variety hours, sketches and songs. With the dawn of the sitcom, however, live telly became largely the preserve of rolling news and breakfast chat shows. Recently, British comedy has started to return to its own live roots, with SNL UK a surprise hit, and now Joe Lycett embracing the spontaneity with his new Friday night variety hour, Live from The Lycett Arms.
Looking like a traditional boozer – albeit one with studio lighting and an unusually photogenic cast of regulars – the Lycett Arms, the comedian Joe Lycett announced last night, is “your favourite local pub”. He twirled onto the stage with a gloriously camp musical number, introducing his first guest, comedian Guz Khan, as well as his “actual biological aunties Margaret and Pauline” who would be tending bar for the evening. From there, the Lycett Arms became a venue for bawdy, music hall comedy, japes with comedians like Mark Silcox and Jake Bhardwaj, and celebrity cameos by everyone from DJ Spoony, Prue Leith and Ross Kemp, to Big John and Stephen from The Traitors. There was a mackerel in a hat, a dragooned toast to Priti Patel, and an interview conducted via a gloryhole (Michael Parkinson could never).
