'You've Had A Stroke?!' and the puns Paul Smith chose to skip

A crowd-work Short from the Liverpool club passed 120,000 views in eleven hours, while clips from the same Paul Smith run sit in the thousands.

Channel: Hot Water Comedy Club Story of October 8, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 185,729 views a day, 54 times a normal first day on this channel (3,448).

You’ve Had A Stroke?! | Paul Smith LIVE at Hot Water Comedy Club

Paul Smith built his name on crowd work, the unscripted back-and-forth with whoever happens to be sitting in the seats. Hot Water Comedy Club, in his home city of Liverpool, is where many of those exchanges end up on camera. The newest one turns on the four words of its title: a woman in the audience turns out to have had a stroke, and the comedian repeats it back in disbelief.

It is only one of several Paul Smith clips the club has posted over the past few days. "The Guide Dogs and Cathy", "JP" and "Martin The Tinder Swindler" all went up around the same time, and each sits in the low thousands of views. This one passed 120,000 within eleven hours. The club's Shorts usually manage a few thousand over a whole first day, and the channel as a whole is having a slower day than usual, which makes the gap all the wider.

The comment section, which on a typical Short barely stirs, has filled up. A lot of it is about what Smith did not say. Several viewers point out that he stayed clear of the obvious wordplay, and plenty of them then supply the puns themselves. One asks what a line about two hands meant. Others write about the woman herself and how readily she laughed along. One viewer adds that they are off to see him live in Dublin.

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More from Hot Water Comedy ClubThis week on the channel +4.4M views this weekPaul Smith asks 'Why Are You Late?' at Hot Water Comedy ClubThe Liverpool club put up fifteen videos, most of them Paul Smith crowd work, and a Green Room episode with Callum Oakley filling in for Tony.Channel: Hot Water Comedy Club · Story of October 7, 2026

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The numbers

One Short from a busy run of Paul Smith clips pulled far ahead of the club's usual first day, on a day when the channel overall ran quieter than normal.

the video's first day

usual first day here

3,448

this video

185,729

subscribers

505,000

▲ 2,000 in the last 7 days

total views

510,121,498

views per day

372,176

typical day: 765,444

the video

views

120,038

likes

2,664

comments

44

days online

1

compared with similar channels (subscribers)

Jenny Tian

604,000

Universal Comedy

600,000

Denny love

578,000

ISMO

527,000

Hot Water Comedy Club

505,000

Jeff Arcuri

443,000

As of October 8, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.

Where next?

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