Presented by Oliver Double

Oliver Double is reader in Drama at the University of Kent, where he has established the Popular & Comic Performance (PCP) research centre and the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive (BSUCA). He is author of Stand-Up!On Being a Comedian (1997), Britain had Talent: A History of Variety Theatre (2012) and Getting the Joke: The Inner Workings of Stand-Up Comedy (2nd edition, 2014), and is co-editor of and edited collection, Popular Performance (2017). Before becoming an academic he was a professional comedian, and he continues to explore the creative possibilities of stand-up, performing both locally and sometimes as far afield as Orlando, Florida. He also presents a podcast based on archive material held in BSUCA, A History of Comedy in Several Objects, which is available on iTunes.