Hecklers at comedy gigs: no longer funny?

Watching a comedian deal expertly with a heckler can be one of the "core pleasures of stand-up comedy", said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. But it was no laughing matter for Peter Kay earlier this month when he ejected two people from his Manchester show because, he said, he had "no choice": their "repeated disruptions" made it "impossible to continue".

Kay was accused by some of being "nasty" and "overreacting". But others agreed with his decision, saying the comedian was "doing what needed to be done" to allow others to enjoy the show.

Repeated heckling can push things "too far" and ruin "others' fun", and Kay was "within his rights to eject an audience member". But it's usually done with a "joke or two" and "a tinge of regret", said Brian Logan in The Guardian.

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'Expect to be chatted with'

Dispatching hecklers used to be seen as a "badge of honour" on the comedy circuit but that fell out of favour for a while, as "the art form gentrified", said Logan. Now, however, "crowd backchat is back in vogue", with many comedians using stage-managed audience banter to amplify their routines on social media.

It's a move that's "widespread for comedians at all levels", with some finding their videos can rack up millions of views on Instagram and TikTok, said Sopan Deb in the New York Times.

Many comedians find "crowd videos" a good way to create social content without giving away their scripted lines, while others, like US comedian Matt Rife, "toiled in obscurity" before uploading clips that attracted huge audiences.

The upshot is that audiences "now expect to be chatted with" or feel freer to interrupt – something that some comedians "aren’t happy about".

'Struggling with boundaries'

After "losing it" at being constantly interrupted by hecklers, UK stand-up James Acaster tried to subvert the "strained dynamic" by creating his "Hecklers Welcome" show in 2023, said Hershal Pandya at Vulture.

The show had a "set of rules" that allowed the audience to do "basically whatever they like" and Acaster was "not allowed to get annoyed at them" in return, said Killian Faith-Kelly in GQ. Did it work? There were "people heckling who would still be jerks", Acaster told GQ, but "I didn't behave badly or act out".

Other comedians actively revel in the hecklers. Jimmy Carr "invites them on his current tour" and dispatches them in a "merciless manner", said The Times' Maxwell. And Jason Manford and Dara Ó Briain are so adept at "swatting them away", it's like a "teacher reasserting control over the class".

But, while bouts of loud heckling can be funny, it shouldn't set the "standard for what to expect at a comedy night", wrote comedian and compere Dani Johns in The Guardian in 2022, after witnessing post-pandemic audiences "struggling with boundaries".

Some people seem to think a comedy show is "more interactive than it is", he said. It's noticeable that a "small percentage of audience members seem to have forgotten how to behave in public".