Comic says his comments were taken out of context

Russell Howard has denied he has retired from TV.

Last week, the comic made headlines when he told the Have A Word podcast: ‘I don’t do TV any more, I just do stand-up and my podcast. I had a pretty good run [but] I just prefer doing stand-up.’

However, he said that didn’t mean he was quitting the small screen forever.

Speaking on the Chris Moyles Show on Radio X this morning he explained: ‘This country is pretty strange – we had an election, and we didn’t have any topical comedy shows on TV… so, I don’t want to do TV for the sake of it and I’d rather do stand-up. That’s all I said, and suddenly, "Howard quits!" Bizarre."

‘I was in New York at the time, and my wife was like, "What’s going on?" And there are all these kind of articles…’

It follows similar comments he made on ITV’s Lorraine yesterday, when he said: ‘I was doing a load of interview and I was waxing lyrical about how much I love stand-up. I said it’s quite nice sometimes just working on your own and suddenly it’s like "Howard quits TV. It was all over the press it was very weird.’

And he called out ‘clickbait’ articles which phrased the story in terns of  ‘you won’t believe the shocking reason why’ he quit. Or didn’t.

Published: 15 Jan 2025