Joe Lycett on hosting live from a pub—if he can pass his licensing exam

Joe Lycett sits across from a pint he isn't drinking. Fatherhood has rewritten his relationship with alcohol—his son is almost two, and bedtime now comes at seven o'clock, which means Lycett often follows. "Children do not respect hangovers, or tiredness in general," he says. That careful equilibrium is about to be obliterated by his new television show.

Live from the Lycett Arms launches this Friday as a live broadcast from a working pub in east London. The premise is deliberately constructed to invite chaos: Lycett will host the show while simultaneously operating an actual licensed establishment. There will be a bar, a cellar, an outdoor area, a saloon, a pool table, darts, karaoke. His aunties will work the bar. Each week a celebrity will arrive for a trial shift as manager. Rotating regulars will filter through. The whole thing is designed to be "constantly surprising and silly," as Lycett puts it, a continuation of his previous late-night show Late Night Lycett but with far more ambitious scaffolding.

There is a problem. Two weeks before the first episode, the pub isn't finished. Lycett has visited the construction site but doesn't actually know the full address—he can only confirm it's in fashionable east London. More pressing than the unfinished walls, though, is a legal requirement that has already tripped him up. Because the Lycett Arms will be a real pub, Lycett must be its licensed operator, which means he needs to pass a mandatory exam: the Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders. He took it and failed. He scored 38 percent when 70 percent was required.

"I didn't do any work, so that is a problem," he admits. "I tried to use common sense, and I don't have a lot of it apparently." When asked to name the four primary licensing objectives under the Licensing Act 2003, Lycett fumbles through something about safe drinking environments and happy places. The actual answer—prevention of crime and disorder, public safety, protection of children from harm, prevention of public nuisance—bears little resemblance to what he offered. He insists he essentially paraphrased it correctly. He did not. Still, he promises the show will proceed. If his licensing situation doesn't resolve, a stand-in licensee will take the legal role while Lycett hosts.

This is a significant year for him beyond the pub. He's returning to standup after stepping back for paternity leave, touring next year after spending the last several months doing one gig a week to rebuild his stage legs. He's also appearing on The Celebrity Traitors later in 2026, a show he's bound by such strict confidentiality that he can barely speak about it. When asked about his fellow contestants, he offers only that the production team and host Claudia Winkleman were nice, and he cannot comment on anyone else.

The weight of his growing recognition—he's edging toward national treasure status, though he disputes this strenuously—hasn't changed his approach to material. "If I started to change who I am on stage to fit what I think people want of me, I'd go mad," he says. He won't write jokes to please the handful of comedy reviewers left in the country. What has shifted is fatherhood itself. He feels more risk averse but also more willing to stand up for things. "It's like this weird tussle between not wanting to annoy the wrong people because I just want a calmer life, and also really wanting to annoy those people a lot more." The new standup material, he adds, includes a significant amount of swimming-based content.

As for the pub itself, Lycett has begun studying the details of existing establishments. He's taken notes on the bar in the pub where this conversation happens, impressed that it's been treated with Danish oil. He's thinking about what a permanent nightspot might look like, acknowledging that celebrity-owned pubs have proven their appeal—Jeremy Clarkson proved that much. But he's also realistic about the work involved. "I think lots of people feel like they could open up a pub or restaurant or whatever, and obviously it's really hard," he says. "But I do like the idea of it. I think it's the cachet of being, like, 'Let's go and have a lock-in at mine.' When the reality must be doing invoices and working out VAT." He pauses, then notes that hospitality is in freefall just like most industries. "Like most industries, it's all just sort of fucked, isn't it?" Six episodes of Live from the Lycett Arms will air before The Celebrity Traitors airs later this year, and before that, Lycett has a licensing exam to pass.