Review of the stand-up showcase for OnlyFans video-on-demand platform

Everybody knows it’s a home for adult content, but OnlyFans is determined to use comedy to prove it can offer more.

Having given away a £100,000 prize to relative newcomer Mary O’Connell in a slightly ill-judged reality TV-style talent competition earlier this year, the platform has now recorded the first episodes of its stand-up showcase series, LMAOF, in London.

As comic Javier Jarquin joked, it’s not necessarily the call you might want  – to be considered the ideal face to make a brand look less sexy – but he and eight others gathered in Hoxton Hall to film their sets for OnlyFans’ porn-free OFTV platform.

Joshua Bethania was a low-key choice to open proceedings, admitting to having a ‘very monotone voice’ and an equally aloof manner. No wonder he’s no good at dirty talk, as he discussed, giving examples of his unerotic approach, but his deadpan is better suited to wry comedy.  Sometimes his slow approach does him no favours, and longwinded set-ups such as the preface for his gag about the Queen dying soon after Prince Philip, could be usefully slashed back without losing the necessary tension. But there’s usually an original punchline at the end of his gently meandering build-ups.

In contrast, Abigoliah Schamaun is boldly sex- and body- positive, her brash all-American chutzpah trampling all over British reserve. Indeed, she insists on maintaining intimidating eye contact with a man in the front row as she explains in explicit detail a bet with a sexual forfeit she had with her partner. Meanwhile, her material on how to compliment a curvy girl is almost instructional, ending with a wonderfully unraunchy rewrite of Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls for the skinny – showing she can write material to match the confronting attitude.

Fast-talking Jack Hester has an arsenal of first-hand anecdotes, told with a witty style rather than bursting with punchlines he’s added, but his livewire personality sells it well. Slightly uncomfortable interactions are a recurring theme, from the playful – when he found himself sat between a couple on a long flight – to the more menacing, a mugging that actually went rather well for him, all things considered. A section about how appalling men are earned an applause break – as it was surely designed to do – while the family undertaker business provides some of the best lines, lightly infused with the morbid.

Having some fun with his ethnic ambiguity, Jarquin is an even more animated performer, especially enjoying playing with accents, from the Cockney to the South African, which his own Kiwi accent is often mistaken for. But his content doesn’t live up to his appealing stage presence. There’s some pretty hack material here,  such as saying he’s in a same-sex marriage ‘because once you get married the sex is the same’ – a variation on a 20-year-old Bill Maher line, if not older – and the hoary recreation of slowly downloading porn in the age of dial-up. He had a decent new payoff to this, but only after a couple of minutes of same old, same old.

Bella Hull also exudes a breezy presence, while sharing a sort of nihilistic Gen Z insecurities, fretting that at 25 she’s now supposed to be the person she’ll be for the rest of her life, yet not feeling such certainty in her heart. She does know what she doesn’t like, mind – outdoor music festivals, clearly being too much of a princess for the dirt. Although she has friends even more precious than her that she’s happy to mock, too. It’s a bit of a chaotic download of thoughts and stories, but some strong lines nestle within.

With a carefully measured delivery, Sam Picone is more calmly in control of his material. As Jarquin did, he touched on looking like a ‘generic foreigner’ to great effect and liked to relive his playground victory in a ‘yo mamma’ insult-trading battle. There’s an edge of darkness to some of his best material, but never so harsh as to be alienating as he has enough of an innate charm to keep audiences on side.

Toussaint Douglass seems to be growing in confidence with each year he’s a comic. The awkward that was once his trademark now exists only in his stories, as his performance is much more assured, moving a little towards more mainstream at the expense of some quirkiness. Still, he remains a geek who’s never going to be at home at a gym, and whose best joke is a comeback to a bullying insult. A savvy routine about the new black Spiderman plays to his strengths, while as an unwilling member of Generation Rent informs an amusing story  in which ‘property porn’ becomes a bit too literal.

Danish-based American Abby Wambaugh is blighted by verbosity, especially in a longwinded story about her being invited – then disinvited – to be a groomsman at a friend’s wedding. It has a decent payoff, but would be just as strong with half the build-up. She tends to be a bit too earnest in her discussions about being non-binary, into men and unmotivated to change pronouns. There are a few wry and witty comments, and she has an appealing low-key confidence, but the delivery lacks flow and punch.

Not accusations you could level at the zestful Australian Thomas Green, whose set bursts with silly, dynamic act-outs that’s just the tonic an audience needs at the end of two interval-free hours of stand-up. He adopts a comically dumb voice when re-enacting our collective odd behaviour in lockdown, or becomes exaggeratedly camp when aping a shark ready to pounce on a swimmer. There are a few cheap jokes in his set, but they form part of a machine-gun delivery that peppers the audience with punchlines in the knowledge that the sheer number of gags and his force of delivery is enough to guarantee a great reaction.

• 15 episodes of LMAOF, taped in the US, are now available on OFTV

Review date: 13 Sep 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Hoxton Hall