I was in Newcastle over the weekend, taking my mum to see Dara O’Briain as a birthday present.  One of the key parts of his act, above and beyond the prepared themes, is his interaction with the audience.  As he says at the start, things will happen in this show that won’t happen elsewhere on other nights.  You had to be there.  And you really did!  The guys in the front row were excellent and I now have Elven Spoon Music, a pied-piper pest controller and several other weird things floating around my head.  The DVD for the show is coming out in November and while the main themes will be the same, you still had to be there.

Which leads me to my Big Idea.  Official Bootleg Comedy.

It would be simple enough to record the audio feed from the microphone during each performance.  Not a complex task to tidy up the file, get the start and finish right.  Then you could go to the comedian’s website, find the date of the performance you saw and – for a suitable fee, plus expenses – purchase the audio track from the night.  You make it simple and easy, no-one will want the hassle of trying to surreptitiously record the event.

There are probably a million and 1 reasons why this wouldn’t work.  But if I could buy a recording from May 12th at Newcastle City Hall, I bloody would.