All this has happened before and all this will happen again...

Finally getting chance to blog about this. Here's a piece of entertainment news that caught my eye over Christmas:

Michael McIntyre Breaks Peter Kay DVD Record

Michael McIntyre's DVD - 'Michael McIntyre Hello Wembley!' has broken the Peter Kay record for the fastest selling UK stand-up DVD of all time by reaching 1,091,000 sales surpassing Peter's record of 1,080,000 copies for his 2003 release of 'Peter Kay Live At The Bolton Albert Halls'. Already holding the number 1 spot in the total DVD chart across all genres, 'Michael McIntyre Hello Wembley!' is set to become the UK's number 1 DVD on Christmas Day.

This is pretty amazing isn't it? Love him or hate him, McIntyre has pretty much become the definition of overnight success.

Back in 2007, I remember showing friends and Swin City customers some of his stuff, notably from the Royal Variety Performance. Virtually none of the people I showed had heard of him before, but everyone like his stuff.

Wind on to present day and McIntyre is now tipped to take over from Jonathon Ross on the Friday Night With... show. His DVDs are massive sellers and his arena tours are sell outs.

Why has McIntyre become such a hit? It took many of his great comedian peers years to achieve such success. Evans. Izzard. Bailey. Noble. All took a lot longer to get to sell out arena tours. Does McIntyre have some Faustian pact raising his profile?

Hardly. The truth is much simpler.

In the time between me showing people his stuff on YouTube in 2007 and receiving a copy of his best selling new DVD for Christmas 2009, the world's economy has jumped in the toilet.

Life is harder, and people are struggling. People need entertainment. In the Great Depression of the 1920s, vaudeville entertainment was big business. It was an era dubbed the 'Roaring Twenties'. No one had any money, things were grim. So people needed to laugh and enjoy themselves more than ever. All this has happened before and all this will happen again.

I suspect the rise of McIntyre can be attributed to the same. I could wax lyric about his broad demographic appeal, but I won't bother. It's obvious to anyone with half a brain. McIntyre even plays up to this in his act with jokes referencing the way his face looks a little Chinese and that he comes across as being slightly camp.

It's been a hard few years. But it is always darkest before the dawn.

Only a few years ago, McIntyre was broke. Debt collectors were coming round. The ever reliable Wikipedia (!) tells me that he recently cancelled a gig in November 2009 with only half an hour's notice because he found out it was a corporate event for a room full of debt collectors.

The man has some principals. Wonderful!

And skipping IS magnificent.