Gigging and the pandemic – Alex
Stand-up comedian
Alex Kealy takes a look at Silicon Valley big tech in his show Winner Takes All which brings him to Komedia, Brighton on Wednesday, March 15.
It’s his second tour, having just about managed to get the first one in before the pandemic shut everything down: “I just about managed to complete it before Covid. I had about a dozen dates in spring 2020. My last date was in Glasgow and it was real end of the world vibes. Most other comedians had already cancelled their shows so I had a lot of people coming to my show who had originally wanted to go and see other people! Obviously the pandemic wasn't good. Every industry has its own lockdown sob stories. It was certainly annoying for me because I found Edinburgh 2019 had gone really well and I was doing a lot of support work. I was really enjoying being on stage at that time and I went from 300 gigs a year to doing maybe eight or ten between March 2020 and March 2021. In one way I was lucky because the other string to my bow is that I was able to do maths tutoring. I was able to earn some money. Obviously maths is not very funny but I do enjoy teaching and I was able to teach up to A Level. And obviously I did whatever everyone else was doing and I took up exercise and new hobbies and running and so on and I engaged with reading about my pandemic a lot.
As for the current show, Winner Takes All looks at Silicon Valley tech monopolies and explores advertising and addiction and why big tech has become the big political tussle of the 21st century. Tickets from the venue.