And you thought HiFi was all about jazz… July 21, 2007

…But no…HiFi does comedy too…

I went with some friends to the regular Saturday night comedy club at HiFi Club in Leeds. It’s the basic ‘2 stand ups and a compere’ type affair and the line up tonight was Dan Nightingale compèreing with Gordon Southern and Matthew Reed (can’t find a decent link for him) as the main attractions so to speak. They were all very accomplished comedians and the audience clearly felt ‘safe’ with them, in other words we could tell they weren’t going to be crap and could relax a bit, perhaps a bit too much for my liking really…

 

Being a Saturday night crowd there were the usual birthday groups, girls and lads nights out. One in particular was just a gift to any stand-up, they were a group from an ‘outdoor adventure centre’ near Leeds and a lot of the off the cuff, improvised material was based around them which seemed to work really well for all three of the comedians, despite their different styles.

 

Although Dan Nightingale was compère, he got across an awful lot of his material and you could really get a sense of his individuality and I would be inclined to go and see him do a full set. Well I would be if it was a solo show, I see he’s been doing some shows with the nauseating Josie Long…but we’ll draw a veil over that matter rapidly.

 

Gordon Southern had quite a laid back delivery, so much so that some jokes I felt were lost on the crowd. Not that they needed the jokes explaining or spelling out, it was more the fact that HiFi is more of a live music venue and people were in the mood for chatting while the acts were on, annoying but on a Saturday night after a few drinks, I suppose it was inevitable really. Therefore, despite being an excellent comic, Southern’s humour often didn’t get the appreciation it deserved.

 

Southern started with some material about him being from Brixton and I thought perhaps he would go down the route of ‘North/South divide’ but he managed to avoid taking the obvious comedy routes too often and it became more about class divides that were often specific to Southerners- while it could potentially alienate a Northern audience in fact it appealed all the more as he was seen to be mocking the South but also making some very funny observations. Again it was never the obvious or well-trodden route, but had an edge to it. There was also an informative account of what to shout to get the help of passers-by if you were being attacked by a knife-wielding mugger, although if in real life you might want to leave out the jazz hands that his wife apparently provided Incidentally the comedy geek in me noticed Southern used a joke I first heard done by Ross Noble, about leaving graffiti in the Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms reading “All the best, Love God” now this seems too much of a specific joke for two comedians to get away with using…

 

Nevertheless, despite this very minor complaint, I’d say that Southern is a great comedian with some sharp observations and a wicked way with words who is certainly worth looking out for.

 

Time for the next act, Matthew Reed was greeted by a heckler shouting ‘You look like Jesus’, I’m sure due to his appearance he’s had this heckle before and he seemed totally bored by it, which started his set off with a slightly bitter edge. This turned out to be typical of his style anyway, which, despite liking some of his material, I wasn’t really keen on. His routine seemed to flow well and integrate the improvised bit with his routine, though he did tend toward the one-liner, which can get tedious after a while (for a prime example of this see Jimmy Carr).

 

Towards the end of his set, for whatever reason, it was as if he wanted to get in a few more controversial jokes and they ended up being ‘tacked on’ the end with no real context, though admittedly they were still funny. Perhaps he felt he needed to make an impact before he left the stage? Well whatever the reason the audience was left with an odd feeling following his set, you can’t deny he had some great ideas and jokes, but it all felt a little disjointed on this occasion.

 

However, despite the audience being typically distracted, there was a great atmosphere on the whole and I’d be inclined to take in some comedy at HiFi again in the future.