JokePit The Comedy Box Office, 103 New Cavendish Street, London (2026)

30/08/2026

John Cleese did something extraordinary at Graham Chapman’s memorial: he turned a room full of grieving people into an audience roaring with laughter.

When Chapman died in 1989, aged just 48, Cleese was asked to deliver the eulogy. But a solemn, conventional farewell would never have suited the wonderfully rebellious Monty Python star—and Cleese knew it.

He began by borrowing language from the legendary Dead Parrot sketch, announcing that Chapman had “ceased to be” and had gone to meet “the Great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky.”

Then he went much further.

Cleese called his late friend a “freeloading b-stard” and joked that Chapman would never forgive him for wasting one final opportunity to shock everybody on his behalf.

He then explained that, because he was proud of being the first person to say “sh-t” on British television, Chapman would have wanted him to achieve another first—by saying “f-ck” at a British memorial service.

The room erupted.

It could have appeared wildly inappropriate coming from almost anyone else. But Cleese understood his friend perfectly. A polite, restrained tribute would have betrayed everything Chapman found funny.

Eric Idle later recalled that everyone had arrived heartbroken and tearful, but as Cleese became “funnier and funnier,” the laughter seemed to release Chapman’s spirit.

Idle eventually led the congregation in Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, although he admitted that singing it through the emotion was incredibly difficult.

The whole farewell was outrageous, affectionate and unmistakably Python.

It also proved something rather beautiful: sometimes laughter isn’t disrespectful to grief—it’s the most honest way to remember someone who devoted their life to making others laugh.

Could you imagine a memorial service like this today—and which Graham Chapman moment still makes you laugh the most?

29/08/2026

The Krays... 🤣👌🏼

29/08/2026

Hey comedy fans!

We’re excited to be back for one night only with a 'Best of the Fest' night of pro comedy.

Saturday 26th June 8pm
Spun Glass Theatre, Stade Hall, Hastings Old Town

Full line-up to be announced very soon, with the first act revealed this weekend.

Limited Early Bird tickets: £10 plus small booking fee.

Available until they’re gone or the full line-up drops.

Get your tickets now at www.Hastingscomedyfestival.com

We can’t wait to welcome you to our post festival event.

Spun Glass Theatre is a wheelchair accessible venue.

29/08/2026

Motörhead performing “Ace of Spades” in the middle of The Young Ones wasn’t just wonderfully random—it helped the BBC afford to make the programme.

When the sitcom arrived on BBC Two in 1982, it looked like nothing else on television.

There were talking rats, exploding kitchens, collapsing walls, puppets, surreal cutaways and entire scenes that appeared to have wandered in from another programme.

The problem was that all this chaos cost money.

Producer Paul Jackson later admitted: “You couldn’t have made The Young Ones on a sitcom budget. It was expensive.”

His brilliantly simple solution?

Put a band in every episode.

Including live music meant the programme could receive funding through the BBC’s light-entertainment department, giving it more money and production time than a conventional sitcom.

As Adrian Edmondson explained: “It got funding from the variety arm of the BBC budget, which meant it had to have a band in each week.”

That’s why Rick, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike could be halfway through destroying the house when, without explanation, an actual band would suddenly appear.

And what bands they were.

Madness performed “House of Fun” and “Our House”. Dexys Midnight Runners played “Jackie Wilson Said”. The Damned delivered “Nasty”, while Nine Below Zero, Rip Rig + Panic and John Otway also joined the chaos.

Then came perhaps the most unforgettable appearance of them all.

In the 1984 episode Bambi, Lemmy and Motörhead suddenly launched into “Ace of Spades” while the students prepared to face Footlights College on University Challenge.

It made absolutely no sense—and somehow fitted the programme perfectly.

Writer Lise Mayer later revealed that she and Rik Mayall largely chose the musical guests, recalling: “The Damned and Motörhead were really sweet.”

Eleven of the show’s 12 episodes featured a musical act. The only exception was Flood, the final episode of the first series.

Even then, the production apparently still needed a variety element—so they used a lion tamer instead.

Only The Young Ones could possibly get away with that.

The arrangement also gave the team two studio days instead of the single day normally allocated to a sitcom. That extra time was crucial for a programme filled with complicated effects, elaborate sets and carefully choreographed destruction.

So the bands weren’t merely entertaining interruptions. They were one of the reasons The Young Ones could be as ambitious, anarchic and gloriously unpredictable as it was.

What began as a clever production decision became one of the programme’s most memorable features.

Without it, we might never have seen Madness in the middle of the madness—or Lemmy blasting out “Ace of Spades” while four revolting students prepared to battle the posh boys.

They didn’t exactly trick the BBC.

They simply understood the rules—and used them brilliantly.

Which musical appearance from The Young Ones do you remember best? And did you know the bands were helping to fund all that chaos?

29/08/2026

Frankie Boyle didn’t merely cross the line, he usually sprinted past it, turned around and mocked everyone still standing on the other side.

This was Frankie doing what made him one of Britain’s most talked-about comedians: choosing a subject most performers would handle cautiously and attacking it with absolutely no restraint.

On this occasion, his targets were the Royal Family and the idea of Princes Harry and William serving in the Armed Forces.

That alone would have been risky territory for many comedians.

Frankie then brought Prince Philip into the routine and delivered the sort of punchline that made an audience laugh, gasp and immediately wonder whether somebody was about to complain.

It certainly wasn’t designed to secure him an invitation to Buckingham Palace.

That uncomfortable reaction was always central to Frankie’s comedy. He didn’t simply want an easy laugh—he wanted the audience to be shocked that the joke had even entered somebody’s mind, never mind been said aloud on television.

For his fans, that fearlessness made him exciting. At a time when many comedians appeared carefully polished, Frankie sounded genuinely unpredictable. You never knew which subject he would tackle or how far he was prepared to take it.

His critics argued that shock alone wasn’t clever and that some targets or subjects should remain off limits.

But whether you loved his material or found it completely unacceptable, it was almost impossible to ignore him.

Frankie built an entire reputation on producing the same thought in millions of viewers:

“You surely can’t say that on television…”

And then saying something even worse.

Was Frankie Boyle at his best when he had absolutely no filter—or did his jokes sometimes go too far?

Is any subject fair game for comedy if the joke is funny enough?

28/08/2026

The Gramophone... 🤣

28/08/2026

How many sitcoms survive this many years and still have viewers waiting for the next episode?

Not Going Out has reached an incredible milestone, and the BBC is celebrating with a brand-new anniversary special revealing how Lee Mack’s hugely popular comedy is made.

For the first time, fans will be taken behind the scenes to follow an episode from its earliest beginnings in the writers’ room, through rehearsals and rewrites, all the way to the final studio recording in front of an audience.

The documentary will also include classic moments, previously unseen outtakes and stories from Lee Mack, alongside contributions from cast and crew members past and present.

Lee announced the special in typically understated fashion:

“After 20 years of Not Going Out, we are delighted to finally give a warts-and-all peep behind the curtain of how it’s made. Thankfully, we have Hoovered behind that curtain, but unfortunately the warts have not cleared up.”

Since beginning in 2006, the sitcom has changed enormously. Viewers have watched Lee go from an irresponsible singleton sharing a flat with Tim to a married father navigating family life with Lucy—while still finding himself in one ridiculous situation after another.

Across more than 100 episodes, the cast has included Tim Vine, Sally Bretton, Katy Wix, Miranda Hart, Hugh Dennis, Abigail Cruttenden and the late Bobby Ball.

Reaching 20 years is a remarkable achievement for any television programme, particularly a traditional studio sitcom—and it proves there is still an enormous audience for quick one-liners, escalating misunderstandings and good old-fashioned comedy.

Have you watched Not Going Out from the beginning—and which character or episode has made you laugh the most? 😂

28/08/2026

Few comedians can fill an arena and still be told they’re not funny quite as often as Michael McIntyre.

Love him or loathe him, he has spent years packing out venues, selling millions of DVDs and presenting some of the BBC’s biggest entertainment programmes, including Michael McIntyre’s Big Show and The Wheel.

Yet his comedy continues to divide opinion.

McIntyre finds humour in the ordinary things most of us recognise: family life, shopping, driving, accents and those awkward little moments we’ve all experienced but never thought to turn into a routine.

His material is generally clean enough for the whole family, which may be part of his enormous appeal. However, critics have dismissed the same approachable style as safe, predictable or simply “noticing things.”

Some of the harshest comments have come from other comedians.

Stewart Lee famously described McIntyre’s comedy as “spoon-feeding his audience warm diarrhoea,” although Lee later explained that the routine contained more satire than a straightforward attack on McIntyre.

Michael’s response to comedians who criticise him was characteristically blunt:

“They’re doing everything except make people laugh.”

He continued: “I worked with a lot of these comics… I was on the circuit… I got more laughs, so they don’t like it.”

And when people suggested that observational comedy was easy, he replied:

“If it’s so easy, then why don’t you do it?”

Behind that confident response, however, some of the criticism clearly hurt.

McIntyre recalled attending the British Comedy Awards after winning, only to become the target of jokes throughout the evening. He admitted that it made him feel “awful” and described the atmosphere as one of “nastiness.”

Perhaps the very quality some comedians criticise is exactly what millions of viewers enjoy. His comedy is accessible, recognisable and can be watched by several generations together without anyone nervously reaching for the remote.

Comedy doesn’t always have to be dark, controversial or intellectually complicated. Sometimes people simply want to sit down after a difficult day and laugh about loading the dishwasher or trying to leave the house with children.

Whatever you think of Michael McIntyre, the audiences filling those arenas suggest he must be doing something right.

Does he deserve the criticism—or is making millions of ordinary people laugh the only review that really matters?

28/08/2026

John Cleese watched Donald Trump invite officials to compete over who could praise him most, and said the scene was so absurd it could have come straight from Monty Python.

The extraordinary moment unfolded during a White House roundtable about crime in Memphis, Tennessee.

Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller began by describing Trump’s achievements as a “national miracle” that would be studied for centuries.

Rather than bringing the praise to an end, Trump turned to FBI Director Kash Patel and challenged him to “see if you can top that.”

What followed was nearly two more minutes of senior officials taking turns to compliment the president, before Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton thanked Trump for “delivering freedom.”

Watching the exchange, Cleese remarked that it was “hard to believe this isn’t a Monty Python sketch.”

Then came his characteristically ruthless punchline.

The 86-year-old comedian suggested that when Trump is eventually gone, the celebrations will be heard as far away as “the outer moons of Jupiter.”

It was savage—even by Cleese’s standards—and immediately reignited the argument about whether comedians should say absolutely anything about powerful political figures.

Cleese has never hidden his contempt for Trump or members of his administration. He has previously called the president a “short-fingered vulgarian” and accused him of having “lost his mind.”

In 2025, he also deleted a controversial post about Stephen Miller after the official discussed potentially suspending habeas corpus for detained migrants.

Some people believe comedians have an important role in mocking power, particularly when political events already appear beyond parody.

Others argue that joking about someone’s eventual death crosses a line, regardless of how strongly you dislike their politics.

But perhaps Cleese’s sharpest observation wasn’t the final insult. It was that a genuine White House meeting could now resemble something the Pythons might once have considered too ridiculous to write.

Was John Cleese’s response brutally funny—or did he take it too far?

And what do you make of senior officials competing to praise a president quite so enthusiastically?

JokePit The Comedy Box Office

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