Customer Reviews
I can't put it down - By: P. Murphy, 18 Jul 2007 
A great beginner guide to the art of stand-up comedy covering all the areas you need to know to get you on the road, from a background history of comedy, to building on persona, to methods on how to build a set, to the importance of getting the audience to like you.
With celebrity interviews, quotes & advice on how they got to where they are now you won't want to put it down.
Interesting and insightful - By: B. Dodds, 05 Jul 2006 This book is interesting for several reasons. Firstly it's written by an experienced stand-up / compere, & more recently the lecturer behind a university stand-up course. Whether stand-up can be taught is a curious debate, & one that Double is better placed than most to explore. That he clearly believesin the value of teaching stand-up skills makes him an excellent person to learn from, & his enthusiasm for the subject carries throughout the book.
Secondly, this is the only book I'm aware of to successfully cover the full spectrum of stand-up comedy. While most books focus on one area or another, this book covers three distinct but inter-related elements that are essential reading for anyone who's workingin stand-up or interestedin it as an art form. Double takes us from the foundations of stand-up, via variety & music hall, to the modern comedy scene. Then he takes us through the mechanics of stand-up, including the process of writing jokes & structuring a set. Finally, he covers the actual experience of performing stand-up. The highs & lows, & the emotional effect of standingin front of a mic trying to make people laugh.
It's pretty rare that you find all three elements covered as succinctly & effectively is they arein this book, & it's a reflection of his experience as an academic & a working comic. But it's also to a large extent a result of the way he's contructed the book based on interviews with past & current stand-up comics. He's obviously spent many long hours with comics, & the book is literally packed with quotations. And by using their words to discuss arguments, & by drawing on their real life experience, Double's put together a very effective & engaging book indeed. It's unquestionably well researched, & as a result carries great weight & value.
I'd previously read Oliver Double's 'Stand Up!: On Being A comedian', &in some ways the two books overlap. But this newer book is bigger, covers more ground, & has more depth than his previous effort. Example: Stand up! has a sizable section on British comedy. In Getting the Joke Double extends this but also puts it into a global context by also charting the rise of stand-upin the USA. So if you've already read the former, it's definitely worth getting hold of a copy of this one too.
