I'm About to Lose Control and I Think Joe Lycett

Joe Lycett has found a highly lucrative niche in being incredibly petty. While most of his peers rely on traditional observational stand-up or deeply personal confessions, Lycett spends his time on stage pointing a clicker at a projector screen and explaining exactly how he managed to wind up a high-street bank or an Olympic diver.\n\nFilmed at a sold-out Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, London, the 74-minute show captures Lycett at a pivotal moment in his career. In 2018, he was transitioning from a reliable TV panel show guest on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown to a theatre-packing headliner in his own right. The tour required a scale of venue he hadn’t yet tackled, but his low-stakes, high-nuisance style of comedy proved perfectly suited for the bigger stage.\n\nThe centerpiece of the performance relies on his chronic inability to leave well enough alone. He recounts sneaking a bottle of wine into an RBS building where his friend Peter worked, signing in at security under the alias ‘Rhubarb Bikini,’ and the bureaucratic headache that ensued. He also details an Instagram feud with Olympic diver Tom Daley over a Barclays-sponsored Pride appearance, a bit that manages to sneak in some genuine commentary on corporate pinkwashing between the jokes. Along the way, there are stories about speed-awareness courses in the Black Country, bad art, and a chaotic interval game where Lycett has the audience tweet him suggestion after suggestion.