Jack Whitehall Quotes

Writing your own jokes, you just kind of keep working on something until you think it might work, and then you try it out and hope for the best.

The thing about stand-ups is you can't really get good unless you're failing in front of a large number of people. That makes stand-up comedy unique: you need a tremendous amount of reserve within you to take the rejection from the audience, and without it, you can't do anything.

I don't really write jokes down. I tend to have a premise that I work out and test on stage.

I failed to get into drama school, and my best friend told me I should do stand-up instead. I was always doing gags and voices, so he booked a gig for me without telling me. I only had four days to write it. I did a seven-minute set; the first four minutes were terrible, but the last two were amazing.

I try to write three jokes every day. I don't sit down and write them, it's just things that pop into my head. Then I'll go watch it fail onstage that night.

I keep my stand-up comedy notes in a pile on my desk. I don't organize my act. I keep myself in a state of confusion. It stresses me out, but I prefer creative chaos.

I think the challenge is going out in front of a paying audience with absolutely nothing and trying to entertain them for two hours. Thankfully, I only think about that right before we go on, and then once we're out there, everything's fine.

I started comedy in 2006. I didn't even think it was a thing I could do.

With stand-up you can just be yourself on stage. And ideally, you can't see the crowd most of the time - it's just lights in your face. But I still have had terrible stage fright.

I don't write anything. It's all done onstage, which is why I always tell younger comics that they just have to go do it. You have to get up, talk, and take a thought or a word and just expound, and you find it in there. I don't sit down and write.

I've learnt that from stand-up - you should always worry that it's going to go badly, otherwise you're too laissez faire.

At some point I stopped stand-up because I didn't have something to say on a nightly basis.

I don't write my standup on paper or anything; but I just organically do it on stage, have an idea, chat it up a little bit. I'm keeping notes. I'm trying to keep up with this world and try to bring out a special every year.

The first night you walk down to a comedy club, at least for me, I had my voice, and then I went on stage and I lost it.

I think it's great training for any comedian to start on cows. Because with cows, you expect them to be bored and just stare at you blankly. And that's exactly what you'll get at a comedy club. If you can toughen up with a cow audience, then you'll never be worried with a human audience.

For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.

Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.

Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there's just no shortcut - you just have to do it.

I found, especially with stand-up, that if a premise works, you can make the joke work. If a premise doesn't work, you can't force it to.

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

It's weird to sit as a comedian. Being still drives me crazy.

I rarely sit down to write something. I usually have an experience and relate it to somebody and go, 'There I connected some dots,' you know? That's what makes people laugh. And then you go and take it on the stage, and sometimes it works, and sometimes people go, 'What's he talking about?' I don't know; I thought it was it funny in the kitchen.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

You can't be a proper comic unless you've been out on stage and felt the fear.

Comedians are really writers who don't have pens and pencils about them, but they riff.