Are Comedians Really Worth The Money

On Friday I was watching Children In Need with my family, as there was nothing else to do, and was quite excited when Terry Wogan said Peter Kay would be on the show, and me being a really big Peter Kay fan had to stay downstairs and watch the rest of it, and was even more excited when he announced that he would be going on tour at some point next year, but sadly he is only doing a four day tour in Manchester, but still to me that didn't matter as it is easy enough to get a train or bus down there.

What really shocked me though was that Peter Kay said that he would be donating a pound to charity from every piece of merchandising sold at his tour, but is a pound really enough to give, considering that a t-shirt will cost about £20 and everything else twice as expensive, it is fair that he is giving to charity but when you think about the price of these things that will be sold, surely a bit more can be given to charity.

The thing that actually made me quite angry was when I looked to see how much a ticket was going to cost I discovered that a single ticket for one of his shows was going to cost £80, which is simply ridiculous, I have never seen anything cost so much like that, to go to one show at £80 just bows the mind, you can see a football game for less than that, and that is about as entertaining as watching Gordon Brown rapping away to Vanilla Ice, it is just simply stupid. I never thought Peter Kay would stoop to that level, no person is worth that price, no one.

This then got me thinking to a previous comedian I went to see in September 2008 at the Dundee Rep, Dylan Moran, and he was simply awful. It was a very uncomfortable performance to watch as it was like listening to a very annoying friend telling you really bad jokes all night, you just wanted to tell him to shut up, was very disappointing as I used to be a really big fan of his. Also he came on drunk, at first we all thought it was part of his act, which it normally is, and usually has a bottle of wine with him on stage, but noticed that he was mumbling his words so half the jokes he was telling we could barely even hear and kept tripping over the microphones wire.

This has shown me that a lot of comedians are not really worth the money and are charging people too much to see them, especially when you consider people are being a bit more cautious in the current state that the country is in. Peter Kay to me is still funny but I would never pay that sort of price to see him, the only thing I would pay that sort of money is for T in the Park or similar music festivals as when you think about how much money you pay, the amount of bands you can watch is well worth the price and over a period of three days rather than £80 for an hour an a half, two hours maximum, it isn't worth it. To them it is now all about the money they make rather than entertaining people.