Ooooooohhh…It’s a good programme!! December 9, 2007

In the absence of a decent new sitcom to capture my attention I have been turning to repeats of the brilliant Alan Partridge on Dave .

(…Incidentally can any body tell me why they chose that name? Because I just read it as a reference to The League Of Gentlemen’s character Papa Lazarou and his demonic calls of “Hello Dave“…)

But back to Alan Partridge. I did watch some of the series when it was first broadcast, and knew how good it was, but for some reason I didn’t watch religiously. Maybe it was because I foresaw a drought in comedy, maybe it was just foolishness, I don’t know but I am thoroughly enjoying every minute of it now.

I would like to draw your attention to a particular clip in the second series. Having impaled his foot on a huge spike whilst trying to climb into a Country Club Alan still goes on stage to give a speech to’Dante’s Fires’ at some corporate event. It does not go well.

Alan Partridge: Dante’s Fire Speech

This scene works on so many levels and is a demonstration of both excellent writing and virtuoso performance. The attention to detail is just one of the aspects that makes it so funny- not only are we given a cringe-inducing moment in the life of Alan with the disaster that happens on stage to him, but the scene is written in such a way that had it gone all to plan it still would have been a funny speech.

The fact the ‘fun-pack’ contains “a torch, a Curly-Wurly, a book of stamps, a free digital watch with a denim strap, a vodka minature, a Bic-style razor and a copy of the Daily Express…” speaks volumes about the company and in turn about the level of Alan’s career. Also Coogan’s mannerisms as Alan are spot on, as he is still persisting on trying to salvage the sppech from the depths of egregiousness by trying to turn on his ‘charm’ and TV professionalism. You don’t need my to endorse it…just watch it.

It is really a shame that I am having to turn to series from nearly ten years ago to meet my need for good comedy but, well, needs must when the devil drives… 😉

Radiohead Tour…no I know it’s not about comedy… December 6, 2007

One of the few things that will coax me out of my insular little world of comedy is news that Radiohead are touring in the UK…

Not only are they touring, but they are playing close to home in Manchester…

Not only are they playing in Manchester but I have gone and bought myself tickets for me and a friend to go on the one date they are there…

Tickets officially go on sale tomorrow at 10am, but I went to w.a.s.t.e the Radiohead official merchandise store to grab them…

I was almost disappointed at how easy it was to electronically stroll up and buy them,I was preparing for the fun and games of trying to refresh the screen on my cranky dial-up (gah!)

Almost disappointed…cos you know I actually got tickets!

29th June, Manchester, Lancashire County Cricket Club.

Expect a full write up on my return…

Might see you there…

Doktor who? November 18, 2007

After the recent of negative posts about new comedy I wanted to show that I wasn’t totally cynical and that there is still some excellent new comedy about. In the absence of decent television comedy at the moment, I feel the need to turn to new live acts to heap praise upon. Although this new act you will have seen and will be seeing each week at the end of BBC3’s Comedy Shuffle.

 

Yes, I’m talking about the man, the myth, the legend that is Doktor Cocacolamcdonalds. You would be forgiven, from his name, for thinking that he is some sort of anti-consumerist protest act in the style of Reverend Billy And The Church Of Stop Shopping or even Mark Thomas, but no, his show has nothing to do with either of these global brand names. The origin of his name is never explored in his act, but that doesn’t matter as it merely adds colour to an already psychedelic act.

 

I saw his act twice at The Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh, so impressed was I with his show. It felt fresh and I saw new aspects of it both times, although his endearingly bumbling manner was actually carefully orchestrated. However he still has the ability to ad-lib to hilarious effect and still keep in character during his sections of audience interaction.

 

And what an original character he has created. Standing on stage in just a pair of brightly coloured underpants, with layers of ties strung round his neck, often talking in monotone. He also sometimes shouts at the audience, not so much in an aggressive manner but more like an upset child having a tantrum. However, he makes the character extremely likeable as he creates an air of pathos, frustration and vulnerability almost like a clown, but not a modern circus clown, more like a traditional Pierrot, but one who has taken too many drugs and is having a breakdown on stage in front of you. There is something about this character that makes you want to look after him.

 

He starts by telling the audience about his early life in almost a fairytale manner, how he was brought up by cats. It almost feels like early Mighty Boosh style territory (that’s meant as a huge compliment by the way) and then the show continues with a series of songs, poems, narration and audience interaction. The songs at first seem rather free-form, almost as if they could have been ad-libbed. But, on a second listen, it becomes clear that they are well thought out, clever and very inventive with language. Songs such as ‘When You Generalise, They’re General LIES!’ and ‘We Didn’t Need It But They Made It Anyway!’ all emerge from his apparently inane ramblings in a slightly clumsy manner, but as the songs progress the structure and the simple but clever lyrics win you over and often get you singing along too.

 

Then there’s the audience interactive ‘Rocky Personality Test’ where he asks members of the audience “Which film do you adore? Rocky 1, Rocky 2, Rocky 3 Rocky 4?” Interaction in shows often has the opposite of the desired effect, as the audience are worried the performer will ‘pick on’ them in some way, however with the Doktor it is all very good natured and thoroughly bizarre- you can’t help but smile when he gets you singing along with both the theme tune to The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air and ends with a completely incongruous sing-a-long of Last Christmas.

 

Although the sing-a-long ending was a great way to close the show and ensure the audience went out smiling and remembering his show, however way he chose to wrap up the journey of the character was what I found so clever, and what made the show special for me. He closed by almost coming out of character, saying basically that the costume, the make-up, the keyboards and the songs is all ‘bloody good therapy’. By breaking out of the character that he had just been performing for the last hour, it was a clever way of showing that as a performer, he wasn’t taking himself too seriously and wasn’t trying to create an air of alienating mystery around his act, but trying to involve the audience even more by showing to us as we walked out singing Last Christmas into the balmy August night that it could potentially be anyone of us on stage.

 

 

 

I know I said I was going to be all positive in this post, but I do feel I have to comment on the Doktor’s appearance on Comedy Shuffle and how it could be off-putting for someone who hadn’t seen his full show- you only got one song by him so you don’t get a true sense of his act. The same goes for Pappy’s Fun Club who only got to perform one sketch, whereas I’m told their show is a clever new twist on the sketch show format when seen in full (which I will be doing next week, incidentally, watch this space for review). This is more a problem I have with Comedy Shuffle as a format really. It seems they are trying to appeal to a younger audience by making the show into a Top Of The Pops but for comedy, showing us acts in 5 minute segments as if we all have problems with our attention span. Fine, it does show a variety of acts, and allows lesser known comedy to be showcased but this is only suitable for certain types of comedy really. Instead of trying to create a format and making the acts fit round it, why not just give more decent new acts the air time and let them choose and craft their own format. I’m sure this approach would nurture more inventive and original writing than either giving new acts merely five minutes to prove themselves, or giving more established writers half an hour of televisual rope with which to hang themselves.

Bain & Armstrong- it’s not exactly Peep Show is it?

Today I’m feeling inspired to write about the latest two offerings from Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, given the disappointing nature of both projects. I’m clearly not talking about the consistently hilarious Peep Show, whose series 4 finale was just inspired, I’m talking about their recent feature film debut with Magicians and the more recent pilot Victorian-themed sitcom Ladies & Gentlemen

Firstly Magicians…when the news came out that Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong were to do a film it was all very exciting- after all they write very well for Mitchell and Webb, and the collaboration between the four of them would have the potential to be a TV-to-film transfer in the same calibre as Pegg/Wright/Frost, though obviously with a very different style.

However as previews were reviewed and commented on it was reported that the film was a little lacklustre and didn’t have the pizazz and flair that a big screen treatment of the topic of magicians should have. Given the fact that I like Bain & Armstrong and Mitchell & Webb on TV, I was a little worried that it was going to be completely awful and un-watchable. These worries were, sadly, almost completely justified. Don’t get me wrong the film wasn’t as dire as the initial write-ups led me to believe it would be, but that’s not to say that it was a good film. It was massively predictable for a start and contained so many plot holes and too many sub-plots which made it feel ‘clunky’ and cobbled-together. Structurally it was more like an extended sitcom episode and that is never going to work for a feature film.

When it came to the acting Mitchell & Webb performed their usual personas pretty well, with Webb as the slightly over-confident chancer and Mitchell as slightly uptight and boring. Though the lack of screen-time they shared proved problematic as the contrast was never highlighted and they couldn’t revel in their usual banter. Nevertheless, they remained likeable and watchable throughout. Jessica Hynes performed to a high standard, but suffered from Bain and Armstrong’s awful inability to write for women characters, or at least write well rounded women characters, after all the twitchy, fragile Toni in Peep Show is very well realised, if slightly one-dimensional.

The subject of the film- a magic double act who split when one killed the others wife in a trick that went wrong on stage, reunited for a magic competition- should have given Bain and Armstrong plenty of scope for comedy situations, however it seems that that is exactly what they thought too. They clearly wrote the screenplay without going into it in any depth, without scratching the surface of the world of magic. So the jokes and situations were at best clichéd and at worst…well they completely ignored the potential of a magic show and seemed to just use it as a slightly glitzy backdrop for the double act of Mitchell & Webb, in the hope that their charm would carry it off.

Therein lay the main problem- they were merely using magic as a backdrop and it wasn’t woven into the fabric of the film; the magic references felt shoehorned in. Contrast this with a film like Shaun Of the Dead where Pegg and Wright had a love of the zombie film genre and the form and content were integrated and fluid, or even with The League Of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse in the section set in the 17th Century where you could really feel the love of the period. In both these cases the passion the writers/actors had for their respective genres/periods was reflected in the detail, references and performances. Something Bain and Armstrong could learn from.

Overall… it appealed to the ‘fan-girl’ in me Mitchell and Webb were sweet and likeable with some excellent lines, but really the best lines were only average in a film context, and far too thinly spread. Had the lines been in a sitcom or even a ‘special’ made for TV it could have been brilliant. Or maybe they should just hand their comedy film scripts to Edgar Wright and let him make them in future, perhaps in the case of Magicians with Jeremy Dyson and Reece Shearsmith script editing, given their passion for all things magic.

Given their unsuccessful venture into feature film, you would be forgiven for thinking they would fair better in a sitcom context, especially considering Peep Show’s continuing brilliance. However Bain & Armstrong’s latest sitcom offering Ladies & Gentlemen, a pilot episode which was long-time arriving on our screens was extremely disappointing. It started out life under the title of Modern Men and promised to be a sitcom showing a group of Victorian men trying to make sense of the ‘modern’ times they were living in. It first came to light when Reece Shearsmith was linked to the show sporting a full beard, just prior to his appearance in The Producers in February/March 2006.

We heard nothing until over a year later when Adam Buxton revealed on his blog that he was part of this much anticipated sitcom pilot, still under the title of Modern Men. Finally a transmission date was revealed, and it was to be shown as part of a series of new sitcom pilots and now had the title of Ladies & Gentlemen. For some reason alarm bells rang with me when I found out of the change in title, it was only a small point but I felt that the bland, generic title could not bode well. It smacked of a show that didn’t really know what it was about, fair enough it was a pilot but I expected more of these writers. Of course if another show exists with the same title then fair enough but a more interesting new title could have been thought of surely?

I was, sadly, proved right. The show consisted of a group of disconnected characters, with barely a semblance of plot. The premise of the show was thinly sketched in, it was set in the Victorian period and made vague reference to the manners and mores of this period but never really exploited the humour and detail that a viewer would expect from a period sitcom. There were three male characters, a doctor (Adam Buxton), a writer (Darren Boyd) who was a slightly over-confident chancer and…I’m not quite sure what Reece Shearsmith’s character was, other than slightly uptight and boring. Hmm, ring any bells?

Oh and the two main women characters were a ‘ditzy blonde’ and an ‘old spinster’. Say no more.

Contrast this with, for example the League Of Gentlemen’s Xmas Special- the Victorian segment with Dr Chinnery was rich in detail and lovingly captured the essence of that era in both the language, design and performances. Yet again Bain & Armstrong fall short due to a lack of passion and research on the topic they are writing about, surely the first things a writer should think about when starting a project.

The show ambled along pointlessly. Now I don’t mind idle banter if the characters are sharply observed and well performed, and I don’t mind a lack of real plot if the script is sharp and witty, unfortunately this show had nothing to redeem itself- the performances were mediocre. Well I tell a lie, complete and utter fan-girl that I am I’d say that it was only worth watching for Adam Buxton’s rather fetching beard.

 

But shhhh! I never said that…

The not so Mighty Boosh… November 17, 2007

The long-awaited ‘new’ series of The Mighty Boosh was broadcast on Thurs 15^th November at 10.30pm. I use the word ‘new’ loosely because a) it had already been premièred on-line prior to it’s BBC3 transmission date and b) Well, in short, I felt I’d seen it all before!

 

Although The Mighty Boosh appears to all intents and purposes ‘random’ and ‘unpredictable’, when it comes to plot it often follows a basic format- Vince and Howard at home or at the ‘Zooniverse’ (or now in ‘The Nabootique’) they banter to highlight their differences, Vince has a new trendy venture which Howard mocks, Howard gets into trouble, Vince attempts to save him but gets distracted with something shiny, Naboo comes to the rescue- and the third series begins with little variation from this.

 

In previous series this simple format was the ideal way to create a framework for the fantastical flights of fancy that Vince and Howard would go on…but the third series opens with an episode all too pedestrian and the fairytale nature of The Boosh boys adventure seems too ordinary. The banter between the characters Vince and Howard used to be inventive and funny and given to the audience in short spurts, but in this episode it goes on for too long and becomes one-note. In addition the main villain of this episode was The Hitcher basically doing what The Hitcher does best- being evil, having a Cockney sing-a-long. Of course The Hitcher was funny and sinister at first but we’ve seen him do all this before…but better. Or should I say worse? The Hitcher just seemed a bit too slick somehow.

 

The same goes for the design of the show, such an important element in The Mighty Boosh. It is now too streamlined and not ‘rough round the edges’ like before. Gone is the reliance on green screen for the fantasy elements… ‘The Nabootique’ looks just too well made, and the sets no longer resemble a disused zone from The Crystal Maze- ‘The Zoo-Zone’ as they did in series one. Come to think of it, Vince’s outfits often resemble Richard O’Brien’s Crystal Maze look, coincidence…?

 

Moreover, The Hitcher no longer looked like he was a Frankenstein’s monster in fancy-dress made from Polos and masking tape. In short, the homemade charm that made The Mighty Boosh unique and special has just about gone.

 

Although I do hope they can inject a bit of the old magic into this series, for the moment at least, it seems The Boosh boys have become so expert at their own style that they’ve forgotten to be original, innocently quirky and most of all funny. Perhaps like a child growing up, The Boosh has become basically very self conscious.

 

However, all was not lost in this episode; I watched with utter joy the return of Rich Fulcher glamming it up as a woman in fur-coat, with a long cigarette holder and full 50s style make-up with her amorous call of “hellooooooooooooooooooooooo”, printed in full on her calling card of course! Her passionate advances to Howard (and who can blame her 😉 ) were more sinister than anything The Hitcher had to offer in this episode.

 

Why won’t somebody give Rich his own comedy series?

Oh wait…they did. It was called Snuffbox and hardly anyone watched it.

The fools.

Back from the ‘Burgh!! August 31, 2007

Well, what a month for comedy that was! I am almost totally incapable of laughing at anything anymore…almost….

But here I am back home and I feel the need to make a comprehensive list first and foremost of every show I saw, so that if I never actually get round to reviewing the shows in detail then at least I have them here for posterity with star ratings to remind me of what I thought of the good the bad and the ugly of Edinburgh 2007!

OK so here are the full length shows:

• Lemons Are For Emergencies Only **
• Help! **
• 40 Feathered Winks ***
• Bedside Story **
  
• Game? ***
  
• A Porthole Into The Minds Of The Vanquished *****
  
• Dye Young/Stay Pretty ****
  
• The Gently Progressive Behemoth ****
  
• The Ugly Kid **
  
• The Oxford Imps ***
  
• Jarlath Regan (Nobody Knows…) ****
  
• Andrew McClelland’s Mixtape *****
  
• Hannah Gadsby Is Wrong And Broken ***
  
• Gordon Souther: Stamp Stamp ****
  
• Murray Lachlan-Young ***
• Will Pickvance and The Cowgate Cartoon ***
  
• Puppetry Of The Penis ***
  
• Phil Kay ****
  
• Stephen K Amos Talk Show ***
  
• Doktor Cocacolamcdonalds: The One Man Rock Opera *****
  
• This Sketch Show Belongs To Lionel Richie ****
  
• Richard Herring- Oh F*ck I’m 40! **
  
• Paul Foot’s Comedy For Connoisseurs ***
• The Mitch Benn Music Club ***
  
• The Voice Of Things Toilet Paper *
  
• The Psychic Detective (And Those Disappeared) **
• Mouse ***
  
• Mark Watson: Can I Breifly Talk To You About The Point Of Life *****
• Mark Watson’s 24 Hour Jamboree To Save The Planet *****
  
• Simon Munnery’s AGM ***
  
• Benefit Gig for Palestine at The Stand (with Janey Godley, Rich Hall, Gary: Tank Commander, and Daniel Kitson) ****
  
• Daniel Kitson And Gavin Osbourne “The Ballad Of Roger And Grace” *****
  

Plus various acts at Phat Cave, Late And Live, Spank, Free Fringe, etc. including-

Mickey D, Marc Maron, Kirk Fox, Harley Breen, Liz Carr, We Are Klang, Pappy’s Fun Club, David O’Doherty, Tim Minchin, Carey Marx, Jamie Killstien, Gamarjobat , Sista She, Brendon Burns, Jackie Loeb, Alistair Barrie, Craig Campbell, Andy Zaltzman, Phil Nichol…and others she can’t remember….

I feel I’ve just been very generous with my star ratings there, so I may edit at some point and be all harsh in the manner of Kate Copstick 😉

He’s So Postmodern… May 24, 2007

OK, yes a bit of a fangirl post here, but I just had to express my current admiration for Justin Heazlewood- the artist known as ‘The Bedroom Philosopher’ . An Australian folk/comedy musician who I (predictably) first found through Tim Minchin’s mySpace ,  I was drawn to the song ‘I’m So Postmodern’ not simply because of it’s quirky and inventive lyrics, but more because, as a Theatre Studies graduate I spent alot of time studying the finer points of Postmodern theory (…rolling about on the floor with a skeleton mask on, recording a description of my surroundings late at night under a railway bridge in Leeds…you know, the usual…)

The song emcompassed my feelings about Postmodernism- I have a certain fondness for it, and yet at the same time know that it can be massively pretentious. What is also clever about the song is that it touches on the way it’s misunderstood by most people who think it’s all about being ‘random’ and all about juxtapositioning- yes there is that aspect to it, but of course that is ‘Postmodernism-lite’. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

Back to Justin Heazlewood. I’ve had his album In Bed With My Doona (if you don’t know what a doona is you obviously don’t know any Australians) on repeat for the past few days. It’s a real grower…and yes I do mean by that that it took my a while to get ‘into’. I think beacuse his clever lyrics are so carefully constructed, full of references and often delivered very fast paced that you need to listen a few times for it all to sink in. Also, if you come to it from a ‘comedy musician’ point-of-view like I did, it is a bit of a revelation to find that he’s not always just about the comedy- for example the song Everybody’s Got The Same Insecurities As You may have a humourous edge to it, but really it could just as easily appear on a (Taco) Belle And Sebastian album (listen to McRock to get that reference 😉 )

So if you like your comedy accompanied by bouncy upbeat folk-inspired music, or if you like your music to have an edge of intelligent self depreciatory humour, I urge you to go and buy his albums and support this very talented and original artist.

That’s BAFTA-WANG!! May 22, 2007

It is very safe to say that it wasn’t a great night for comedy, but then 2007 hasn’t been a great year for comedy overall, so it was slim pickings indeed. The Vicar Of Dibley was nominated more than once, but why I am surprised I don’t know. Dibley seems to get nominated at every single awards ceremony, every single year whether it’s been on TV or not. Perhaps in a few years time we can look forward to it being awarded the ‘Best Comedy Never To Have Been Awarded A Music Prize’? Plus Richard Curtis was getting the Lifetime Achievement Award…say no more.

As for Best Sitcom we had IT Crowd, The Royle Family, Green Wing and erm…that other one that nobody had heard of… Pulling…? Or should that have been ‘Scraping (The Barrel)’?

IT Crowd was passable but even the brilliant Chris Morris as Denim couldn’t really make it better than average. Talking of Morris many people see Green Wing as a cheap Morris (specifically Jam/Blue Jam) rip off with it’s jumpy camera work, music and speedy-uppy/slo-mo effects, but against the other nominations I think it should have won- I think The Royle Family, despite it being of a high quality, has had it’s day. Green Wing was at least a truly contemporary success, plus I can’t ignore the fact it has two young female writers involved. Oh and did I mention that I actually find it funny?

Best Comedy Performance was a wash-out, a total waste of a category. Dawn French for Dibley, Liz Smith for Royle and Merchant and Gervais for Extras. Yawn. Oh what I would have given to see Chris Morris win it for Denim, the crazy boss in IT Crowd! Or failing that, I think Joan Rivers should have taken it for her intro-

“Gervais, he slept with my cousin, and never called her again. A mean thing to do to a Jew with a hare-lip… and she had just learned to say ‘Riii-cckyy!’”

“Stephen Merchant, I don’t know who the fuck he is so he can’t help MY career!”

Poor Merchant, I think they only nominate him so that when Gervais wins and ‘is unable to be there as he’s filming in America’ there is somebody to carry it home for him. I say Poor Merchant, but he seems to enjoy playing second fiddle to Gervais…I’m certain this wasn’t the first time he’s gone up to accept a BAFTA on his behalf…or maybe I’m wrong and it was the other way round- Gervais going up to accept Merchant’s? Either way it smacks of smugness, on both their parts.

So, the last comedy related category of the night was Best Comedy Series and the nominations here were quite a mixed bag. In the introduction, reference was made to the nominees reliance on catch-phrase, which in the cases of Little Britain Abroad and The Catherine Tate Show is a fair point- it’s what those two programmes base their success on (as well as crude, lazy writing and a lack of originality or vision…), but when was the last time you heard anybody quoting the very poor and slightly obscure Little Miss Jocelyn? Come to think of it when was the last time you spoke to anybody who had ever seen it?

That Mitchell And Webb Look does have it’s catch-phrases, granted, but it seems to sit on the fence in this respect- never going all out and using them as a launch pad for dolls, pencil cases and a whole host of meaningless merchandise, but they still, if not exactly flog their catchphrases to death, certainly in some cases they beat them into submission. ‘Numberwang’ being the main example of this. However what saved Mitchell and Webb with this particular sketch is that the more they did ‘Numberwang’ in different variations it ended up going past the point of being a repeated catchphrase and actually could have been seen as a comment on televisions predilection for the repetition of a single idea/sketch thinly disguised in various forms. I don’t know if this move into what could be tentatively called a meta-sketch was intentional or not, but I really hope it was.

 

I was of course very pleased that That Mitchell And Webb Look won this award despite feeling that it wasn’t really the best they have to offer us- a fact a fact we all know deep down but some of us don’t like to admit. In addition, winning the award could be seen as faint praise when it was clear to any true comedy fan that the other nominees were completely dire. But I don’t see it as faint praise considering the commercial popularity of The Catherine Tate Show (and Little Britain) as we all know that ‘they’ (the TV producers, execs, commissioning editors etc.) like to try and give people what they think they want. For once the award seems to have been given on merit. And if nothing else they’ll now be able to use one of those ‘BAFTA Winning’ stickers when their DVD comes out rather than just ‘BAFTA Nominated.’

Now, what we’ve all been waiting for, and what was possibly the highlight of the whole show for me…the screen caps of Catherine Tate’s face when Mitchell and Webb won the award. I’ve gone for before and after shots of course.

“No BAFTA?? How very dare they!!!”

 

Tim Minchin: The Lowry: Jan 07 May 13, 2007

Having first seen Tim Minchin at a late night stand up gig at the Gilded Balloon in Aug 06, and scouring the internet for any information on him ever since then (and *ahem* making myself known on his website and mySpace) etc etc, I was looking forward to finally seeing a full-length show by the man himself.

We got to the hotel rather late, but with what should have been plenty of time to get ready, however it was 7.50pm before we knew it…and we didn’t actually know how to get to the theatre. My watch said 08.02pm by the time we got there and we still didn’t know which venue we were in. When we finally found it fortunately a fair few others were still being shown to their seats so we didn’t miss anything. I was worried we’d have to be shown to our seats when the show had started because we had front row seats…well I say worried, but I doubt I’d really have minded being picked on by Tim.

As for the show itself, it was a mixture of his first show ‘Darkside‘ and his latest show ‘So Rock’. This was both good and bad. Good, because in fact the majority of his songs from both shows were played- making for a longer show. And you can’t beat a double dose of Tim. Bad, because with the bits in-between the songs you could tell that it was a mixture of two shows, and it didn’t flow quite as well as it could have, however that’s only a small criticism in a show that is 99% spot on.

From the moment he walked on stage he held the audience’s attention completely. At first I think it was bemusement at the contrast between his mad-professor hair, his hippy-ish bare-feet, and the dramatic physical comedy he used in his egotistical opening song So Fucking Rock…however mixed in with this is a large dose of self-depreciation (“the fact I don’t wear shoes is just an affectation…”). The audience seem to then really warm to this very ‘small’ and tentative persona he adopts when he speaks (and during some songs) enabling him to do stand-up material about illegal mini-cabs and rape victims and sing lyrics such as “you grew on me, like a tumour…” and yet not offend anybody.

When he talks in-between songs it’s a mix of audience banter and structured stand-up routines, but still to me he’s not a stand up comedian- he’s an actor/musician who happens to have an awesome sense of comic timing and wicked sense of humour, who is also highly intelligent. The ‘stand-up’ routine which stands out to me as an example of this is about the theory of evolution. The refreshing thing about it (and much of his comedy) is that it actually treats the audience as if they do have an ounce of intelligence- seemingly a rare thing in comedy at the moment. He never spells out the joke, he expects the audience to do some of the work too and meet him halfway, which they are more than willing to do.

Not only does he have the ability to improvise during his ‘stand-up’ routines but also within his songs- especially during his dramatic piano solos. So, although I had heard his songs many times on CD, his facial expressions and physical comedy make them really come alive and, as should be the case with good live comedy (and live music of course), you feel you have been part of a unique experience. In addition you always get the impression Tim is thoroughly enjoying every minute of his performance- there is also often an element of child-like and gleeful ‘showing-off’ mixed into his complex stage persona, endearing him ever more to the crowd.

This was also demonstrated during the finale to the first half, and again he mixed in an edge of uncertainty to his performance. Halfway through his inspiring environmental message ‘Canvas Bags’, he begins to unbutton his shirt, but rather than doing this with a simple air of confidence to match the content of the song, he is at first hesitant. Then, with further child-like glee he decides it is not enough to preach the benefits of ditching plastic in favour of reusable canvas bags via the medium of song…he needs FANS! Rather then a slick and impressive set up, he opts to shuffle off stage to bring on his own fan from the wings and position it in front of himself allowing it to billow out his open-shirt and blow though his impressive locks… so by the end of the song the audience were left questioning whether he was really ‘Tim Minchin comedy performer’ or if he really was some sort of new Environmental Messiah.

(Picture taken by Catherine.)

 

At the end most of the front row and a few other audience members gave a standing ovation, and (caution, fan-girl comments alert…) I am pleased to report he came over to me and waved right at me, and also afterwards in the bar he said hello to me by name. I was pleasantly surprised that he knew who I was, after all he does have a lot of fans on his websites! I also met Lyndsey who frequents his mySpace page, at which point Tim remarked that usually fans were “a bit wierd” when they met each other, to which I replied “well, it’s because we’ve all got you in common!” A fair point I think! After he’d signed a fair few canvas bags for people, he came and sat with me and Cath for a bit of a chat and I finally cleared up the case of misheard lyrics from his song ‘Darkside‘. Overall he was so genuine, polite, and laid-back with a lot of time for everybody.

(I’m on the left, Cath’s on the right.)

 

Quite simply there should be more people like Tim in the world…

And especially in the world of comedy.