Academic Oliver Double edits major book on live comedy

Stand-up turned comedy researcher Oliver Double is putting together an authoritative academic guide to the artform.

Based at the University of Kent, he is editing The Cambridge Companion To Stand-Up Comedy which will feature 16 chapters written by researchers from around the world.

He told Chortle: ‘There'll be chapters on the history of stand-up in different countries – the UK, the USA and, er, Finland – stand-up venues, stand-up in the recorded form, stand-up and gender and sexuality, black stand-up, Jewish stand-up, stand-up and disability, offensiveness in stand-up, the politics of stand-up, methodologies of stand-up, stand-up audiences, persona, and how stand-up deals with trauma.  I'm doing the introduction and the persona chapter.’

The book is not due out until December 2023, and will be part of a series from Cambridge University Press designed to be ‘authoritative guides, written by leading experts, offering lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods.’

Existing books include companions to various aspects of law, literature, music and religion. Double previously co-wrote a chapter called Brecht and Cabaret in The Cambridge Companion to Brecht as well as a number of books on comedy, starting with 1997’s Stand Up.

Last year, he wrote a definitive guide to the alternative comedy explosion of 1979. The acclaimed book (see our review here) was initially released as an academic title with a hefty £75 price tag - but will be out as a paperback priced £28.99 next month. (Order here)

He said: ‘They’re supposed to balance being academically sound with being written so they're accessible to the general reader. I think there have been around 300 of these things so far, with 10 volumes dedicated to various aspects of Shakespeare. It was about time they did one on stand-up, so when they asked me to do it, I obviously said yes.’

As part of his research for the book he has set up a survey to ask working stand-ups about certain aspects of their work.

‘Most of the book's going to be written by academics, so I thought it was important that it will also represent the views of actual comedians,’ he said.  ‘So I've set up a SurveyMonkey with six simple questions - anything from "What do you do to prepare to go onstage?" to "Why do you do stand-up?"

‘The idea is that comedians can provide short, one-sentence answers to one or more of these. It's the sort of thing that should only take five minutes to do. The aim is to get anybody from new comics to big names, from a range of countries.’

The survey is here.

Published: 2 Sep 2021