I have just discovered Reggie Watts.  I am taking his energy into my work Zoom team meeting tomorrow.

I guess you had to be there.

Spent all day watching Stewart Lee on YouTube

Was it funny? No but I agreed the fuck out of it !

I just nearly died laughing watching Peter Kay dealing with heckles

You dropped your wallet, haha.

Blocks100 wrote:

Srsly, no one dig him? This is my favourite so far:

Rapping in the club style.

Yes

I took his claims as bait.

Right, myself and Cos did a dozen standup shows in three days, here’s what I thought of them (in chronological order to help me keep track):

Nina Conti: The Dating Show

This is the second time I’ve seen Conti, and while this show did not quite scale the heights of the first, it was still pretty great. Using real humans from the audience as ventriloquist dummies remains a genius idea, and adds real spontaneity to what is clearly a largely improvised show. If you get the chance to see her, I highly recommend it.

Ivo Graham: My Future, My Clutter

TBH, while I remember enjoying this at the time, I can’t remember much of it now. Pretty decent, I think?

Tim Key: Mulberry

Tim Key’s response to lockdown. Lots of audience participation, one of his first acts upon taking the stage is to pull a can of lager out of a fridge, take a swig and hand it to a guy in the front row to hold for him, cue this poor guy being reprimanded throughout the show for not getting the can back to him quickly enough. Oh, there were also some poems. Superbly entertaining.

Day 2

Huge Davies and Janine Harouni Do New Jokes (WIP)

I’ve always enjoyed Davies from his appearances on Cats does Countdown, and there was little else on that we wanted to see, so we thought we’d check this out. I’ve never seen a work in progress before, and it was a lot of fun, it’s nice to see that Davies does possess the ability to smile. Janine Harouni I was less sure about, some good jokes about abortion, but otherwise fairly traditional.

Michael Spicer: The Room Next Door

Michael Spicer recreating some of his room next door sketches live while also offering thoughts on going viral. Possibly not the greatest show we saw, but I love those room next door sketches, so I was more than happy to show my support and enjoy some of them live.

Heidi Regan Gives Birth Live on Stage Every Night or Your Money Back

We went along to this one based on it being recommended by Huge Davies, it being part of the free fringe, and us just having a gap in the day. I don’t know that Cos loved it, but I did. It was an hour of silliness about marriage, babies and playing your wife like a cello that I thought was utterly charming, as well as very funny.

Neil Delamere: Liminal

I understand that Neil Delamere is a bit of a bigger deal in Ireland than he is over here. All I know is that I’ve heard him on Russell Kane’s Evil Genius podcast a few times and he’s always made me laugh. The stands were not even half full, which was a shame, as Delamere managed to make both myself and Cos laugh harder than anyone we’d seen up until that point. It felt like the meat of the show was in the crowd work, which Delamere is great at. When he fell back into his pre-prepared routines it was a bit more hit and miss, one about loading a dishwasher felt a bit like it was beamed in from a Fringe show ten or fifteen years ago, but another about recruiting “cousins” to appear on an Irish TV show featuring families competing was much better.

Alice Fraser: Chronos

I know Alice Fraser from her always-excellent appearances on The Bugle. This wasn’t topical comedy, but rather a show written on a train from London to Glasgow dealing with the idea of truth in comedy, the writing process and the march of time. There were some genuinely cracking lines (Scott Morrison ruining the Ukelele for manic pixie dream girls sticks out) plus some banjo.

Day 3

Mark Thomas: Black and White

Mark Thomas opened with telling any Tories in the audience that they should go and get a refund now rather than complain after the show and ended with a run of gags about Boris Johnson at the pearly gates via a Bohemian Rhapsody singalong which itself was setup to a joke about the national anthem. As he put it, this was a comedy show rather than one of his theatre shows, with the main difference between the two being that the theatre shows are twice the price, have half the jokes and end with him getting a prize. That’s doing his theatre shows down, but was a great line, and one of many. Thomas has been doing this a long time now and it shows, it was a great set.

John-Luke Roberts: A World Just Like Our Own, But...

This one was a bit of a punt, I’d seen a bit of buzz about Roberts on Twitter, there was a recommendation from Alice Fraser the night before, we had a gap in our schedule, and, seeing as we had three very political comedians lined up for the rest of the day, it seemed that a bit of silliness in the afternoon would be welcome. We got that and more.

The premise of the show is that Roberts’ husband, who works at CERN, gave him some quantum particles which he accidentally put in the washing machine (which is onstage with him) turning the washing machine into a portal into other worlds which are similar to ours apart from one small change, most of the show is him simply listing these worlds (a world just like our own but broccoli contains tiny squirrels, a world just like our own but the makers of Sonic the Hedgehog really did their research into hedgehogs, a world just like our own but all Taylor Swift songs are written in the third person), interspersed with occasional phone calls from other John-Luke Roberts (‘? ‘s? s?) in other universes and occasional returns to the story of his relationship with his husband. Oh, and some songs.

It was an absolute triumph. I saw a lot of great shows over these past few days, but if I were to recommend one to others to go and see, it’s this.

Frankie Boyle: Lap of Shame

Not sure I need to say much here, if you’ve ever seen one of Frankie Boyle’s shows, you’ll know what to expect. He remains as filthily funny as ever, and has even started adding touches of through lines to his jokes rather than simply firing off one liners for an hour. This was great.

Nish Kumar: Your Power, Your Control

This was the final show we saw, and it ended up being a great end, in large part due to the audience being ridiculously up for it (at one point Kumar mocked us for applauding “not even setups, just information”), but this was the story of a bad gig that would up being turned into a bigger story than it ever should have been due to being picked up by the right wing press and the aftermath of that. Kumar is as at ease taking the piss out of his audience as he is himself, and is very funny with it. The ending maybe could have been better (there was a riff on national anthems which possibly went on a bit too long), but despite that, this was another great gig to top off three days of back to back great gigs.

Phew, that was long.

Really good read Yoss.

Yeah, great write up. Absolutely loved it and will definitely be going back.

On reflection I think John-Luke Roberts was my highlight and thoroughly second the recommendation to check him out. Only one or two shows that didn’t quite hit for me but even they had moments of quality. Just a brilliant experience.

What! Amazing. I think it's very brave to get up and so stand up.

More power to you mate. Takes massive balls to do that.

I would absolutely love it if your entire set is based around Japanese RPGs, ERE

That’s cool, ERE, good luck with it.

How would you describe your style? Anyone you’ve been compared to?