Would two gigs a night help solve stage fright?

It must be odd for new comedians, sharing a bill with experienced acts. For a new comic, a single live date can loom in the diary like New Year's Eve or nasty dental surgery: absolute dread. That set will be mulled over for weeks, on long journeys and dull workdays, right up until the very moment they finally get on stage, say their first words and hopefully channel the adrenaline in a good way.

Meanwhile, your long-serving comic will often rock up five minutes beforehand, having done a gig elsewhere already, then head straight off to do another gig straight after, with barely a thought for how the middle one went. No time; straight back on the horse. That's the joy of doubling up, trebling, or more for particularly hard-working comics: one night's work can sort you out for the week.

If only newer acts could jump straight into doing a few shows the same evening; it might seem doubly daunting but would probably take the pressure off, no end. Perhaps the circuit should introduce it: a bonus button where you can instantly double your night's gigs, when you feel ready to gamble, a savvy punt like knowing when to use the double up feature on slot machine websites. Book the slot, double up, and roll the dice.

It can often be tough to get gigs when you're new, of course, but you do wonder if having more than one date on the calendar would make it seem a lot less ominous. As Maisie Adam told us recently about her meteoric rise from newcomer to TV regular, just booking as many gigs as possible is the best approach to getting over those early-gig nerves. In fact, she did a whole hour for her very first show, at a local festival, which is certainly one way to get experienced quickly.

Some comics are more natural on stage than others, of course, and those acts sometimes lull new hopefuls into a false sense of security. Not everyone can do that, and it's amazing how your natural patter can vanish when you're on a stage with a mic. So, experiencing a certain amount of nerves about gigs is not necessarily a bad thing: at least you've got that set you fretted over, to fall back on. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail, as they say in sports.

In fact, envying people who have that ease with an audience might never go away. The many comics who rely on writing (and inevitably ditching) loads of puns for each show surely sit offstage all green-eyed with jealously at the freakishly fortunate acts who seem able to turn up and chat to punters as if they've just pitched up at their local pub.

Then again, that doesn't always translate into wider success. It's not uncommon for chat-happy headliners who absolutely destroy club audiences every night to never quite find the right format to make it work on TV, if that's where they want to be, and then the tours that tend to follow. So doubling-up in the clubs is nice, but one massive headline show a night: that's the dream.