‘I didn’t know I was a screamer. Turns out I am’ – the spooky secrets of Last One Laughing: Halloween

The comedy smash is back – and now the standups aren’t allowed to laugh or shriek! Lou Sanders, Tom Allen, Phil Wang and more reveal what made them crack – and what happened when they went too far What could be more disorientating for a comedian than not being able to laugh – for nine hours! – nor elicit laughter from anyone else in the room? I’ll tell you.

Try all of the above on a sunny summer weekend while pretending it’s Halloween.

Then force the comics to return to the scene of what one of their number, Phil Wang, calls “a cross between a gameshow and a psychological experiment”, and relive the whole ordeal for a man from the Guardian.

Is it any wonder Wang, Lou Sanders, Tom Allen and others come across as a little punch-drunk 24 hours after emerging from televised captivity on the smash comedy hit Last One Laughing? It’s the day after filming, at Elstree Studios, the show’s Halloween special which sees a unique tweak to its winning formula: contestants must not only refrain from laughter but from screaming.

“Which I thought might be a non-event,” says Wang, “but it’s actually harder.

I didn’t know I was a screamer.

Turns out I am.” The participating comics – including paranormal obsessive Daisy May Cooper and that maestro of comedy-horror, Reece Shearsmith – seek not only to amuse each other but spook them too.

Which makes sense, says host Jimmy Carr.

“Laughs and screams come from the same place.

There’s surprise in a joke, and there’s surprise in a jump scare.

Comedy and horror mess around in the same area.

It’s the same bit of your brain.” Continue reading...