Jonathan Grant on Reading the Room - Book Club
Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP)
British Comedy Guide
4.7 • 5.8K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2026
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
RHLSTP Book Club #181 - Reading The Room - Rich talks to comedy historian and former stand up and agent, Jonathan Grant about his much needed work about the state of stand up comedy in the 21st Century. They chat about Jonathan’s reasons for writing the book, who he talked to, the difficulty of summing up two decades worth of stand up, how we’re at a place of opportunity and variety in stand-up but how doing the actual job is being squeezed, whether comedians come from doing proper jobs like in the old days, how online comedy can be a boon or a burden and how lock-down and the internet has led to intergenerational cross fertilisation (mainly in comedy terms). Plus the wonder that is Chris Evans (not that one) and gofasterstripe.com
Buy the book here - https://gofasterstripe.com/cgi-bin/w.cgi?showfull=69222
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Audio mix by Ben Evans (NTO)
Thanks to Chris Evans (NTO)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Ratfans, thanks for downloading my podcast. |
| 0:03.5 | Not quite sure what's happening in June, thanks to a medical procedure I have to go through. |
| 0:08.8 | We've had to cancel those Lester Square Theatre Gigs on the 1st and 8th of July, |
| 0:14.2 | but hopefully we'll be back for everything else. |
| 0:17.1 | Everything happening in the first week of June is fine, including we're doing two shows now at the Roman Theatre in St. Albans. |
| 0:24.3 | The 6pm show is sold out. |
| 0:25.7 | There's now an additional show at 8.30pm. |
| 0:28.9 | It's me and Katie Wilkins, a very promising stand-up comedian, doing two sets in a Roman theatre with some old jokes for Romans and some new jokes that I've never done before. |
| 0:40.3 | Richard Herring.com slash gigs for links of that. |
| 0:42.3 | Would love to see you there. |
| 0:44.5 | I'm not sure how many stand-up gigs I'll be doing in the next few months. |
| 0:48.9 | So come along to that one if you can. |
| 0:50.7 | And of course, Rahalasdapa is at the Edinburgh Fringe for the first 12 days, |
| 0:56.2 | Richard Herring.com slash Rahalasdapa. We're doing 14 shows in 12 days. So there's every chance |
| 1:03.6 | you can come and see us. We'd love you to support us with that one if you can. Hopefully we'll |
| 1:08.6 | see us through to the new year and then who knows what's going to happen to Rahalashtabar after that. Not me. Not me. I don't know. Okay, Richardherring.com |
| 1:18.5 | slash gigs. Richardherring.com slash for Halestepa if you want to add a little bit of financial |
| 1:23.3 | support to keep the podcast going. Go fast to stripe.com slash badges and you get loads of lovely rewards. |
| 1:28.9 | Thanks for listening. |
| 1:30.5 | Do tell your friends and so on. |
| 1:32.6 | We love you. |
| 1:33.3 | Goodbye. |
... |
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