We still enjoy music from the 18th and 19th century and regard the sixties as having had the best pop, or at least second best to whenever we were seventeen. Yet stand-up rarely outlives its decade. Any stand-up from more than ten years ago has the whiff of mortality about it. I’ve known perfectly good circuit stand-ups take a break for just a year or two, try something else then come back with their old set and sound almost offensively out of time, callously indifferent to the prevailing tempora and mores.
