...and we review it

Madonna has made her stand-up debut.

The pop icon has previously spoken of her desire to become a comedian, and yesterday performed a four-minute routine when she appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Madonna took to the stand-up stage after telling Fallon that her 'dream' was to become a stand-up, saying: 'I'm kind of a closet comedian.'

She added that she liked the simplicity of the art, saying: 'Because I always do extravaganzas, they cost a billion dollars to make, they get carted around in nine planes. It drives my manager crazy Nobody makes any money. Sometimes I dream about simplicity.'

Fallon then invites her to the stage, which she does but not before pleading with the audience: 'Will you guys laugh if my jokes suck?'

Here is her routine:

Chortle review

Being a global music superstar gives you no short-cuts to being a comic, as Madonna found out last night.

She's spent her life on stage, but she made the same mistake as many rookie stand-ups, with a routine full of hesitant 'so anyway's, nervous fiddling with the mic stand, and insisting the jokes were funny, despite the lack of reaction.

Advisedly, the 56-year-old said she was going to 'talk about what she knows' - so discussed dating younger guys, a promising premise, although she took a pretty superficial approach.

And she might want to work on her relatability, with references to having 'some Warhols hanging on the wall' and a Picasso over the fireplace is hardly the stuff of everyday experience.

But she has a history of raw honesty and provocative opinion that could translate to stand-up… But she'd need to spend a couple of years finding her voice in the clubs first. Now that's something we'd like to see…

Review by Steve Bennett

Published: 10 Apr 2015