Saturday night in a certain comedy club in North
London. The audience, two hours in to the show and
slightly worse for wear, are baying for blood. The
compere, having barraged them with fairly aggressive
material for most of the night, walks on to the stage
following yet another act that has failed to keep
anyone’s interest for more than a couple of minutes.
Grinning, he goes on to viciously insult the very act
he had previously built up.
The same night. A different comedy club in London.
At the end of the night, the compere declares the
audience to be his closest personal best friends and
announces that he would like to shag each and every
one of them.
In a comedy club further north, the compere fights a
losing battle to keep the atmosphere going as the
audience get increasingly bored with his slightly
desperate demeanour and weak, cliched material.
Another club. The compere has the whole crowd on
their feet, swaying side to side with their arms in
the air and joining in with the four audience members
on stage as they re enact the opening titles of the A
Team.
The Oxford English Dictionary of the word ‘compere’ is
“a person who introduces acts and performs the role of
master of ceremonies in a variety bill”. Probably.
Obviously, the success of any night of comedy does
depend to a certain extent on the success of the
compere. But to exactly what extent does the compere
control the outcome of the night? Is a bill only as
good as its compere? And what is the job of the
compere anyway? Comedy Lounge would like to put forth
the following evidence.
The comedy compere can come in many shapes and sizes.
Many clubs have a resident compere, someone who acts
as intermediary between the audience and the acts.
Audience interaction can be a big part of this kind of
act, building up a rapport and chatting with audience
members. Some comperes go for the more material
oriented approach, lashing out five minutes at a time
before bringing the next act on to the stage. Others
go for the more malicious approach, picking on one or
two members of the audience through the night and
returning to them when the going gets a bit dull.
Regardless of their approach however, the most
important job of the compere is agreed to be the job
of keeping the crowd’s enthusiasm going all night.
At the infamous Late and Live gigs during the
Edinburgh Festival, the success of the night
undoubtedly depends on the compere. The difference in
the atmosphere on nights is certainly attributable to
them alone. For example, during last year’s festival,
there was a marked difference between the nights when
Adam Hills and Ross Noble were compering. Both are
obviously masters of the craft, but their different
approaches to the night produced very different
atmospheres. Hills addresses the audience as a whole,
and keeps the mood as light and breezy as it is
possible to keep it in the Gilded Balloon at that time
of the morning and with that high a level of alcohol
consumption. Noble on the other hand would encourage
the more raucous elements in the audience, leaving the
night often teetering on the edge of – but quite never
falling in to – chaos. The Late and Live show hinges
totally on the achievements of the compere, as acts
often inevitably die, through no fault of their own,
but rather through the relatively short attention span
of the crowd.
In the vast majority of comedy shows however, the
compere is not the star of the night. It is still
arguably the most important element of the show. In
the examples at the start of this article, there are
questions raised by each of the acts in question. In
the first example, is the compere to blame for the
other acts dying? Would the acts in the second
example have done as well without the compere? In the
third club, could the other acts have had a better
night had the MC been slightly more enthusiastic? And
in the fourth case, is the compere doing his job
properly by taking all the attention away from the
acts and directing them on to himself?
The job of the compere is certainly the most difficult
job in comedy. If you are too funny, then nobody
wants to see any of the other acts. Too crap, and the
whole night can be ruined. And if you’re on a bill
with a lot of great comedians, the compere can
sometimes seem redundant. But nevertheless, in any
circumstances, it does seem to be an acknowledged fact
that, when it comes down to it, a compere can make or
break a night.
