It's like he was playing with cheats on. Though Sam Campbell was eventually bested in a finale tie-breaker by David Mitchell, no one was better suited to Last One Laughing UK than the Australian absurdist who has been a staple of the UK panel show scene apropos of his appearances on series' like Taskmaster and 8 Out of Ten Cats Does Countdown. On paper, the game has a simple premise: ten comics are shoved in a room together for six hours with the object of making one another laugh, without themselves giving up a guffaw or, as the clock ticks down and the rules are more ruthlessly enforced, cracking even the subtlest smile. Two strikes, and you're out.
Among this season's crop of megawatt comics, only Alan Carr entered with a reputation of being especially giggle-prone, and he did remarkably well to survive for as long as he did, even as one of the first to be knocked out. Many of the rest arrived with a penchant for deadpan, or at least the sense that they could capably spend half a day in dead-behind-the-eyes mode. (Reigning champion Bob Mortimer's strategy was to contort his face into a nigh-on permanent scowl.)
That said, even the steeliest of the lot — among them David Mitchell, Romesh Ranganathan, and Diane “Philomena Cunk” Morgan, for each of whom impassiveness is baked into their bit — showed glimpses of cracking before they were eventually eliminated. But Campbell never, ever broke. It was as if he'd had his funny bone surgically removed; he prowled the room like a blank-faced alien who was biologically incapable of laughter. It was a great defensive strategy, but he was also a quiet assassin. Take his frequent attempts to knock out Carr, who entered his crosshairs early on, deploying his knack for the absurd by dropping bizarre questions into otherwise mundane chatter. He asked him about mole people. He quizzed him — this is Alan Carr, mind — about his interest in extreme sports. The best: “Where do you stand on quad bikes?”
His comic persona is based on a foundation of gawky, poker-faced awkwardness, and that's like having an atomic weapon in a game that is inherently anti-social. While the others eventually had to run away from increasingly bizarre, mundane conversations that threatened to get too funny, he could simply ramp it up to peak-absurdity. He was already super weird, and more than happy to get weirder.
In one sequence designed to break the group, comedians Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou entered as pretend intimacy coordinators, quizzing each of the comics on their questionable sexual habits. They prodded at Campbell by calling him “the child,” which he parried with incredible ease: “You know, I just got asked to host Junior Naked Attraction.” It's a deadly, deadpan wit that he demonstrated again moments later; asked if Jimmy Carr had ever touched him, he responded that he was only touched by the host's professional resilience, “staying on top for, what is it, 40 years?”
By the time the finale arrived, five-and-a-bit hours had passed without Mitchell or Campbell so much as cracking a smile, despite relentless assaults from their colleagues. Both players seemed to have entered an impenetrable flow state. Though it made for a somewhat anticlimactic finale, it was still fascinating to watch; Campbell lost out as the tie-break was decided on how many laughs they'd caused during the game, with Mitchell winning 2:1. Still, we're chalking this up as a win for Campbell, having come in as one of the least famous faces but proved to Last One Laughing's massive mainstream audience that he can hang with the big dogs.
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