Over the last few decades there have been numerous short-lived attempts at asserting that comedy is the new rock and roll, usually when a couple of decent-looking young male comics emerge and get the teenage girls interested. Would comedy fandom ever really reach the levels of obsession that you'd get in music or football though?

Take your big arena-filling comedians, your Howards (who we assume are popular with the ladies) and Flanagans (who go down well with the geezers). You can't really imagine the teenagers screaming, crying and camping outside the comic's house, like they did with One Direction, or Bros in that recent documentary. And you can't really envisage blokes putting a Flanagan flag in their back garden.

Yep, it's a funny thing, the workings of fandom. The thing is, real obsessives don't get to make rational choices. If you were looking to book a hotel you'd go to TripAdvisor or one of the other review sites. Anyone with a good tip on the horses might be taking a gamble with this guide, which compares the best places to bet. Even those looking for love tend to swipe through a big selection on a dating site these days, rather than skulk around in bars.

But the pop star that turns kids hysterical, or the football team that will ruin your weekends, forever? They just seem to happen. One minute you're living your life, the next you're a superfan.

Comedy can seem even less rational than most types of entertainment: who knows why we laugh at one thing and not another? But at least the laws of supply and demand seem to make more sense: if you find something funny, you'll buy a ticket, and if you don't, you won't. Whereas football fans will often keep coming back in their tens of thousands even when their team gets relegated two years running and becomes a total laughing stock.

Musicians also have a big advantage over comics, as they enjoy the benefits of repetition. You only really need one great song to be set up for life (well, as long as it's a hit; a lot of great songs never make it) and if you come up with ten decent ones, that's an album you can tour forever. One of the great post-millennia marketing ideas is the 'classic album' tour - veteran bands whose ticket sales are finally starting to dwindle suddenly announce that they'll be playing a classic album all the way through, in order, and the fanbase goes berserk, again. Genius.

Now comedians can sometimes re-tour their greatest shows, but generally speaking the audience is expecting a whole new set of classic gags each time they launch a big new live event. All killer, no filler, or it's an awkward silence, the momentum goes and those fans may not bother leaving the house next time.

Football teams? If they go two-nil up, half the crowd will urge them to sit back, do nothing and hold on to it for the last half-hour. They're actively hoping for no more drama. And as soon as a popular musician decides to try out a new song they're really excited about, everyone goes to the bar. It's a different world.