© Matt Crockett Mark Watson announces 2025 tour
Dates, too, for Lauren Pattison, Derek Mitchell and Mr Chonkers
Mark Watson has announced a new tour, loosely based on the advance of artificial intelligence.
Before It Overtakes Us also covers the comic’s experiences when a flight he was on in in Australia last year developed engine failure – and him making the the Daily Telegraph’s 50 Funniest Comedians Of The 21st Century list. At No 50.
The description of the show also talks about the Taskmaster runner-up’s anxiety and how he spoke to a customer-service representative called Phoebe for almost half an hour before realising that ‘she’ was a chatbot.
‘It sent him down a rabbit-hole exploring ChatGPT and its strange quasi-human brothers and sisters,’ the blurb says. ‘People mock or dismiss this new technology pretty easily, but it’s developing at a staggering speed. Already, you can ask a robot to "write stand-up in the style of Mark Watson" and get a pretty good approximation.
‘Does the remarkable progress of tech in our age present us with an opportunity to transcend our human fragility, becoming something better than the feeble beings who quake when a plane needs to make an emergency landing, who struggle even to communicate effectively over the purchase of batteries? If we’re clever enough to have built machines that can out-think us, might we be able to use them to teach us, and improve our prospects in the universe?
‘Or are they overtaking us, day by day... and if so, is there anything a comedian can do to help us cling to our humanity? ‘
A total of 29 dates have been announced today, kicking off in Belfast on May 5.
It is one of several shows Watson’s production company Impatient have announced today.
Also going on tour is Lauren Pattison with her latest show Big Girl Pants, about turning 30 and talking on more adult challenges such as learning to drive and showing up for a colonoscopy,
There are also dates for Edinburgh cult hit Mr Chonkers, the charmingly silly alter-ego of American absurdist John Norris, and Netherlands-based comic Derek Mitchell’s Double Dutch. The latter’s shows at Soho Theatre in London play on alternate nights with with his debut, Goblin
Published: 13 Dec 2024
