Your material better be bloody good if you haven't learnt it and instead read off a laptop, while seated drinking Jack Daniels, palming the audience off with a sore throat sob story.
So it was lucky for Andrew O'Neill that his history of British industry from Dark Ages to Dyson wasn't just a bunch of cheap gags, but a cleverly-plotted side-splitting narrative.
From spot-on analysis of the past - "unfortunately for Scargill, Thatcher was a ****" - to an inventive foretelling of the future with the rise of cloned boy-bands and a circular twist on a par with Douglas Adams that will send shivers down your spine and ripples of laughter through your body.
This is the genesis of an industrial-strength comedy.
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