No laughing matter
I can’t think many people will be dismayed by the BBC’s decision to cancel Live At The Apollo.
The consensus on my social media timeline (which I accept may not be universally representative) is that the long-running show lost its way a long time ago, but I was pleased to see ‘heavy metal comedian’ Steve Hughes mentioned by several people as an example of what the show has been missing.
Hughes isn’t a household name but after the Australian appeared on the show in 2011 he was my first choice when we organised an hour long Stand Up for Liberty event at the Comedy Store in Manchester during the 2011 Conservative Party conference.
He was unavailable on that occasion but I persisted and, two years later, when we organised a similar event at the same venue during the 2013 Conservative conference, he was the headline act and was brilliant, despite being unwell on the day. (We asked him to include his routines on smoking, health and safety, and political correctness, and it’s fair to say he delivered.)
I tried to book him again in 2019 when we marked Forest’s 40th anniversary with a gala dinner for 200 people at Boisdale of Canary Wharf, but I was told he had moved back to Australia so we booked Geoff Northcott instead.
Talking of so-called comedy shows, I honestly don’t know why the BBC continues to commission Have I Got News For You which peaked in the early Noughties and has been insufferable ever since. Surely it’s gone on long enough? But no, it’s now into its 356th series (or whatever) and for people like me (who used to watch it religiously) it’s simply not funny, so who on earth is watching it?
Many years ago Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield famously lampooned HIGNFY and other panel shows and did it so brilliantly you would have thought the producers (not to mention team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton) would have died of shame, but here we are, in 2026, and nothing has changed.
It really is extraordinary that no-one at the BBC has the guts to say ‘enough is enough’. I assume it’s because the ratings must still be on the right side of respectable, but it would be nice to know. Like every other licence payer, I do help pay for it, after all.
