Si Hawkins wonders if stand-ups should throw a bit more fantasy into their sets.

You get an interesting mix of noises in our house, most evenings. On the telly there's invariably some random stand-up I've ended up settling for after browsing through every other Netflix category for ages.

Meanwhile, from the PC in the corner you'll hear ominous and jarring shouts of 'BEWARE!' over and over again, plus dramatic music and sound effects. It's quite a crossover: imagine if The Comedy Store was invaded by Orcs. That's about the size of it.

The reason for this novel soundclash: I'm a big comedy geek, while my other half is a long-serving devotee of World Of Warcraft, the massively popular role-playing video game in which lots of pointy-eared avatars get together and fight, or think about fighting, or just wander about. I've never quite gotten the point of it, in truth, but a lot of people love these flights of fancy. You can even combine fantasy worlds with the casino, like in this sword and sorcery-fuelled Cloud Quest slot game (best offers).

Role-playing games are big business though - WoW alone has something like 10 million regular players. So it surprises me, a bit, that we haven't seen many comics out themselves as fantasy gamers. These are people with lots of free time during the day, after all, and some of them are definitely geeks. So it stands to reason that numerous stand-ups must get over their on-stage traumas by losing themselves in a pretend world and cathartically hitting loads of cartoon fellas.

Comedy and gaming have been getting closer together in recent years, but it's usually retro interactive stuff that everyone can relate to: Manchester's Foxdog Studios have become cult Edinburgh Fringe favourites, while McNeil & Pamphilon Go 8-Bit! morphed into a TV show, Dara O Briain's Go 8 Bit, which has just been recommissioned and spawned a spin-off.

Perhaps the more telling live example is Tony Jameson's 2013 show, Football Manager Ruined My Life, which seemed a bold gambit, at the time. Wise old comics insist that you shouldn't do material about niche subjects like football, and particularly football games, as it limits your potential audience. But Jameson's show discovered a whole new one, in Edinburgh and beyond.

Rows of football-shirted geezers (it was mostly geezers) managed to get dressed, drag themselves away from their screens and enjoy a communal laugh at some niche jokes about great Football Manager signings who never made it in real life, and the like. He was touring that show for years afterwards, at regular clubs, football clubs, corporate events. It was, to a certain extent, a game-changer.

So would something similar about a fantasy game work? 'World of Warcraft Ruined My Second Life', perhaps. There are certainly enough players, but can you get them to step away from their other life and actually leave the house? Who knows, with a fair wind such a show might become a cosplay event in its own right: comedy venues full of people dressed as elves, warlocks and half-man, half-wolf warriors. It certainly beats football shirts.