3D TV may never have taken off - only the obscenely famous enjoy wearing dark glasses indoors - but it's likely that our leisure time will be spent wearing bulkier headwear in future. Virtual reality is still relatively new, but whatever type of entertainment floats your boat, someone is probably inventing a VR version. There are dedicated VR video games, movie sci-fi experiences, interactive VR sport apps, and now live comedy shows.

In late October the Lancashire stand-up Freddy Quinne (pictured) will film a live special, called Quite the Catch, in virtual reality, so people at home can pretend to be in a comedy club in Liverpool. Which probably isn't the sort of limitless fantasy world that the inventors of virtual reality initially envisaged, but it takes all sorts.

The VR stand-up idea has already been tried a fair bit in the States, with Reggie Watts a particular pioneer: from the YouTube videos of his VR shows it does seem an odd experience though, as everyone in the virtual club appears as avatars and the audience 'laughs' via emojis. It's certainly no substitute for being there - but could VR actually be useful in other ways?

A recent news report at www.casinoreviews.co.uk reveals that new lottery winners in Canada are being offered VR-based counselling to help them cope with tricky new situations, such as unscrupulous distant relatives suddenly becoming a lot less distant. One of the eight-minute scenarios involves a scammer trying to con the wearer out of cash at a party. So, if VR can help with that sort of social awkwardness, perhaps it can also provide a sort of 'fright simulator', for what many people reckon is one of the scariest things you can do: stand-up.

However confident you may be in your material, there's nothing quite like standing in front of a live audience for the first time: poise, timing and then punchlines can quickly go awry. And practising in front of a mirror just doesn't offer the same adrenalin-fuelled jeopardy. But an immersive virtual reality simulator might be just the way to acclimatise.

How would it work? Well, we're no VR experts, but that Reggie Watts model where the avatar audience emits emojis instead of laughs would definitely be useful practise for certain shows. It sounds very much like gigging in Scandinavia, or middle-class UK suburbs: a sea of smiley, disconcertingly silent faces. Even the big comics find that bewildering.

Reggie had a live online audience to work with though, so our comedy simulator would probably be more like a traditional video game. Think one of those first-person shoot-'em-ups - a Doom, Call of Duty kinda thing - but here you 'fire' jokes at the audience and hope that a few will land. Learning how to cope when your best gags misfire is an essential weapon in the stand-up's armoury.

Users could set their ideal difficulty levels beforehand too, the varied audience types ranging from easy (long-running Radio 4 show on tour) to medium (good-natured but increasingly tipsy hen party) to the virtually impossible (supporting a rock band at Glasgow Barrowlands).

The most genuinely useful VR comedy application, though, and most like that Canada lottery model, would be dealing with hecklers: you launch the VR stand-up app, start telling your gags and suddenly someone berates you, which should lessen the shock when it actually happens. Here you'd obviously include a cheat mode too: press a button on the headset and it launches a heckler ejector seat. Now that's an innovation real clubs should employ.