If you need an antidote to all the grimness of the world, there is a show on Prime Video called Last One Laughing. When I started watching it, we laughed so much — up in the higher register, where it borders on a scream and physically hurts — that our distant neighbours must have thought we were in the middle of a kidnapping attempt!
In brief, Prime has chucked what I presume was a ton of money at getting the best collection of comedians — Daisy May Cooper, Richard Ayoade, Joe Lycett, Lou Sanders, Sara Pascoe, Joe Wilkinson, Judi Love, Rob Beckett, Harriet Kemsley and Bob Mortimer — into a kind of Big Brother house, where they just have to try to make each other laugh.
But if anyone laughs — joker or jokee — they are removed from the game. To laugh is to lose. You must always remain poker-faced. However funny someone is being. However much Bob Mortimer is performing daft magic tricks to Queen’s A Kind of Magic, right in your face.
“This format will not work,” I said as we sat down to watch the first episode. “If smiling and laughing are banned, that’s going to kill the vibe. It’s literally the worst format for comedians to work in. I predict this show will be terrible.”
And then, ten minutes later, we were all snorts, cackles, ROFLs and guffaws. Running the full mirth gamut.
Go on. Watch it. I dare you. But no giggling in the front row!