Review of the comic and podcaster's gig at The O2

For his first UK arena show, the world’s most popular podcaster, UFC commentator and supplement salesman has assembled a stand-up rally that will energise his base while tilting valiantly at the windmill of critical disapproval.

Joe Rogan’s audience doesn’t quite pack out The O2, but with the nosebleeds going for well over £100 each, Rogan can probably afford the return flights for himself and his three support acts: a group of podcast friends in snappy matching suits, brought together by their worrying obsession with trans athletes.

The crowd are invested. They have a special relationship with Joe and they don’t mind coming to the country’s worst venue to see him. Cheerful puffs of berry-flavoured vape smoke drift over the vast arena like swamp gas from a bog. It’s not as exclusively male as you might expect – the crowd is maybe 15 per cent women, and they’re vocal at first, although they become slightly less so as the comics roll out their material.

Korean-American comic Hans Kim is up first, jokingly introducing himself as gender fluid to boos from the crowd. Setting the tone, he busts out a couple of mid-tier slurs right out of the gate, and moves swiftly on to material about Asian stereotypes, trans athletes and the differences between men and women. He seems to perform a sort of beta-male role within the troupe, or at least is the only comedian to affect anything like low status.

Brian Simpson comes as close to bombing as it’s possible to get in The O2, where laughter is generally reduced to a kind of ambient wind. His long-form storytelling and strangulated delivery doesn’t hold water with this audience.

At one telling moment he begins to say that something is ‘crazy’ and then self-corrects to the R-slur. He seems the least at ease in front of this crowd, and he’s a slightly gentler presence than the occasion calls for, even when he gets into ‘the three reasons why I’d punch a woman in the face’.

In every section of the show, reviewers and sensitive audience members are baited to take offence and to take quotes out of context, as I’ve just done. So in the interests of balance, the context, as ever, is that they’re being a bit ironic about it.

Final support is the incredibly grim Tony Hinchcliffe, smirking more than you’d think medically normal. ‘The Comeback Era has begun,’ he says, referring to his return from being ‘cancelled’ a year ago for racist abuse directed at an Asian comic. He gets the biggest laugh of the night by referencing Liz Truss, but during his particular take on trans athletes, a dark cloud begins to descend for anyone still on the fence.

And then at last, to standing and screaming, Rogan enters, beginning with: ‘The problem with comedy these days…’ Turns out it’s reviewers writing down the things he says.Rogan is practised and confident, technically solid, owning the role of cringey overbearing uncle and warmly received by the thousands of present and future overbearing uncles in the crowd.

Although it’s a common suite of personality traits, there’s still an interesting tension between his fully toxic masculinity and the side of him that likes to take mushrooms and proclaim his love for all mankind.

He says it’s this love that means he could never be homophobic, but despite his protestations he’s homophobic in a weirdly literal way, running through routines that seem to hinge on a genuine fear of gay men, what they might do to him, and becoming gay himself. Maybe if he smoked less weed he’d be less paranoid, but publicly smoking less weed is probably the one thing that could still conceivably damage his brand.

It does raise an interesting question as to why he cares so much about whether people think he’s sexist, racist or homophobic. Most people would probably say he’s all three, but it doesn’t seem like it should matter to him. His whole position is so staunchly individualist, so based in not caring, it’s interesting that he comes back so often to the critics and what he’s allowed or not allowed to say from his giant $200million platform.

Like his support acts, he repeatedly dares us to take to Twitter and complain about the many ‘unsayable’ things that are said on stage, which would feel braver if they hadn’t been so incredibly strict about making sure our phones were in locked bags.

Tackling the thorny issue of scientific misinformation, he says it’s your fault if you’re getting your vaccine info from him, which is a good point. Although that obviously ignores the possibility that hundreds of thousands of people might have done exactly that, presumably to their cost in more than a few cases.

He’s at his most good-natured when he’s playing the stoner being too high at the airport or telling us cool facts about hyenas, but it’s difficult to leave those all-important talking points alone, so it’s back to trans athletes once again.

Like almost every routine tonight, it’s sort of technically close to the bone, but what a ravaged and flavourless bone we’ve been left with by this point. By the time he makes a ‘did you just assume my gender?’ joke (in 2022!) you’d hope we can all agree it’s time to put certain topics to bed. 

But the appetite for this stuff will never fully go away; the best you can do is confine it in some kind of nightmarish dome where the material can please its intended audience.

As a visitor there, you might wish there was a little more variation, maybe an occasional surprise or even a single laugh, but if you’re anything like me, it’s not for you.

Review date: 23 Oct 2022
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: The O2