HOWZAT

JOHN SHUTTLEWORTH

Middle-aged singer-songwriter, the creation of the comic Graham Fellows

“I am very surprised they are offering a degree. I would have thought a CSE or possibly a City & Guilds qualification at the maximum, and only if you had given someone a hernia. That would be the examination. It would have to be awarded by Drs Cannon and Ball or Prof Jim Davidson.

“There should be a joke department and a clown-skills department. I mistrust alternative comedy, though, so only a small division.

“Comedy graduates could become taxi drivers, window cleaners, milkmen. They are the best comedians, not these people who get up on stage with a bottle of water. I saw one who had a towel and kept wiping his hands. What was all that about?”

RUDI LICKWOOD

Stand-up comedian who teaches comedy in prisons, youth centres and businesses

“Comedy has never been something you could find in a job centre. You had to try to stumble across it in the back room of a pub. It’s great it is finally coming up from under the rocks.

“Students need to be taught the skills and techniques of performing. You start with an audience of 500 people and you have to turn them into one person. The stand-up who dies on stage when he calls a woman fat in a bad way has to be shown that there was a good way of doing it.

“I have taught for eight or nine years. Sometimes when I’m teaching I think: ‘What am I doing? I should be performing’.” ()

MIRANDA HART

Comic and actor, star of Hyperdrive on BBC Two