Live
Lee Hurst · 1997 · PolyGram Video (UK VHS)
Audience interaction and panel show secrets on a West End stage.
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Lee Hurst capitalizes on his nineties television momentum by booking a massive West End stage and turning it into an interactive pub debate. Best known at the time as the breakout star of the BBC sports quiz They Think It’s All Over, he brings a combative, fast-talking sensibility to the theater, openly soliciting questions from the crowd and trading insults on the fly. It is a document of a working-class comic succeeding largely on his feet in front of an enthusiastic fanbase.
Filmed at London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre, the 1997 release acts as a victory lap for his panel-show era. Hurst pulls back the curtain on his television gig, detailing behind-the-scenes failures and off-script disasters during the quiz segment “Feel The Sportsman”. When he actually sticks to written material, he breaks down the fighting techniques of football hooligans and explains the precise mechanics of how he managed to call his own grandmother the worst word in the English language without facing consequences.