Comedy: Not suitable for recycling

You can now rent stand-up comedy DVDs in my local video shop. This is a serious surprise.

I can see how people might prefer a night in with 90 minutes of stand-up comedy instead of some of the "comedy" films on the shelves (one day, if you're unlucky, I might be able to bring myself to write about "Just Go With It") but, given how much cheaper it is, I can't really see much in it for the comedian.

Of course, renting a John Bishop DVD for a fraction of the cost of buying it (and, I'm guessing, an even smaller fraction of the cost of seeing him live) might be cheaper but it is obviously not the same experience as seeing the show. The real problem for comics is that, while the experience might not be the same, the jokes probably are.

I don't think it's a coincidence that comedy DVDs often seem to be released at the culmination of a tour. By the time the material has been round the country a) it should be honed and b) everyone who was going to see it live, has done. So the DVD is a way to extend a comedy show's comparatively short shelf life.

Because comedy is arguably one of the least recyclable and most energy-consuming forms of performance art. Great comedy shows insatiably eat up excellent material. The jokes come thick and fast. When things are going extremely well, some are literally thrown away.

And unlike aging rock bands endlessly re-playing the same songs, comedians can't go around re-playing their amazing first routine. Even if their comedy isn't particularly topical, people expect a new tour to mean a new show, which means new jokes.

So committing a comedy show to DVD is like pressing 'save' on the great comedy computer. The sad thing is you can only save that performance that night in that venue (probably the biggest one of the entire tour) which means that something of the show is inevitably lost. The material might be saved but the show is definitely over.

And I think that sense of being 'over' suffuses the DVD itself. I rarely re-watch my Dylan Moran and Tim Minchin DVDs for the same reason that I have only ever seen a second show on the same tour once (also Tiim Minchin but I put that down to the songs). They might still make you laugh but jokes are never as funny the second time round or, in my experience, on the DVD.