August 1998 - February 1999
Mutt's Nuts, The Hand and Racquet, Whitcomb Street, W1
THE upstairs room at this West End pub is a decent size, with a bar, low lighting and country beams everywhere.
MC Mark Felgate hit the right note of friendliness, energy and pace; he warmed up the audience without hogging 'act' time.
First-on David Caruana was affable and is definitely becoming more of a performer than a bloke telling stories.
Eve Guthrie looked very new and young and lacked presentation skills. But she had some good material and a quiet confidence about her.
Aussie Tony Bailey had some excellent and intelligent gags but needs more oomph. He has to find his comedy legs after taking a year to get to England. (If the plane had gone any slower, it'd have fallen out of the sky).
Then we were treated to Phil Davey, loudly confident with some interesting thoughts on sleep. He's a top act and put a buzz into the room.
The next two acts, Juliet Cowan and Belinda Merriman, both looked great, had presence and tried to perform would-be shocking material. But it was a bit coy: adolescent girls shrieking on the bus stuff.
Finally, headliner Ian Stone came hotfoot from the Comedy Store, just round the corner. His humour was Jewish but not exclusively so. He was very bright and relaxed.
Overall, a splendid night for this new club.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
Georgina Gush / February 1999
Mickey Flanagan, Buccaneers, London W1
IT was a good night with the audience outnumbering the acts - something that hasn't happened in a long time.
And Mickey Flanagan - who looks like such a nice boy - did a hysterical routine on the East End, world travellers and kinky sex.
I really shouldn't approve but he's extraordinarily funny. It's hard to see how someone retains their charm while delving in gross areas, but he does. If he dropped the f-word, we could be talking TV.
The other acts were also good. Paul Sinha put in a polished few minutes, which would be even better if he moved away from punning; Shappi Khorsandi was infectiously funny and smiley; and with a bit move focus on ordering his act David Keay would be brilliant.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
Georgina Gush / February 1999
Mitch Benn, Buccaneer Comedy, London W1
MITCH BENN had the audience falling about with his tried and trusted song "Crap Shag" and an excellent new song about an audience's fear of the musical comic.
But for someone who can assemble such killer lyrics, his patter between numbers and joke-telling is curiously defensive - as though he knows he is weak without accompaniment.
His playing and songwriting is so strong, however, it's easy to glide over these moments.
Benn's well-deserved encore - Perfect Day as sung on the BBC promo by 40 voices - was amazing. On its own it should silence any carping critics of musical comedy.
STAR RATING (out of five): ***
Georgina Gush / February 1999
The Red Rose Comedy Club, Finsbury Park, London N7
SATURDAY night at the Red Rose - one of London's most famous comedy venues, now back under the stewardship of its progenitor Ivor Dembina.
Dembina is a curious character: a little bespectacled man who seems to carry the woes of the world on his shoulders.
But he knows how to run a great club.
In the few months since his return, the large room behind the Labour club in Finsbury Park has cackled with comedy. Now his audience is reaching its "critical mass" of 120ish, the Red Rose is becoming a top gig once again.
As a compere, Dembina has the most extraordinary style. Most professional MCs exude confidence and look absolutely bullet proof.
Dembo's approach is to carry his vulnerability and self-doubt on stage with him, allowing him to question the audience without posing a threat to them. The comedy then stems from his quick wit in turning their answers into jokes.
He used a girl's boast that she'd just spent £200 on buying bras to great effect. ("50 quid a bra, 25 a tit!").
That led to a whole string of quips that warmed up the audience very nicely.
First on, Andy Parsons was a crowd pleaser, although not to my taste. He shouts and swears too much and that detracted from his performance; his material (cereal packet instructions, grumpy old people etc.) was neither clever nor original; and his yobby persona didn't really ring true.
Drew Barr was far worse. He boasted a smart suit but very weak material. And with the audience, he dipped alarmingly until only a handful of people were laughing at his jaded routines.
You can't get away with feeble jokes about flying and getting drunk any longer. To be brutally honest, Barr wasn't really up to playing the Red Rose.
True pro Martin Coyote turned the evening. He has a lovely manner and some very good routines.
And headliner Simon Bligh was absolutely outstanding. I love his technique; leaving the microphone in the stand and acting out his flights of fancy around it. He picked on audience members but left them feeling good about themselves. And he was topical without being boring.
There's no doubt Bligh is a real gem of a club comic - worth the £6 admission fee on his own.
Overall it was a very good night's entertainment in an atmosphere that was unusually sexy for a comedy venue.
The Red Rose is an important club and it and Ivor Dembina deserve all the public support they can get.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
January 1999
Buccaneers Comedy, The Hope, London W1
I ARRIVED late and swelled the paying audience by 20 per cent. But I was in time for the very pleasant and funny Lucy Baylor who looked slimmer and bendier after birth than I have since the age of 14.
Mandy Muden was nearly hoisted by her own petard when her lascivious patter induced an American to strip to his boxer shorts! Her wonky tricks are always appealing.
Very confident David Kelly spread his little good material with great skill and excellent magician Danny Buckler used audience members without embarrassing or humiliating them.
After his commended performance on Channel 4, he deserves a bigger audience.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
Georgina Gush/January 1999
SUCK IT AND SEE, BAR LATINO, Islington, London N1
EVERYONE with a guitar amp, microphone stand and access to a bar seems to want to launch a comedy club these days. Stand-up isn't the new rock 'n' roll - it's the new karaoke!
And the opening night of Suck It and See was a first-rate demonstration of how NOT to do it.
First, the room - a garishly-painted nightclub - is totally unsuited to comedy.
From the soap box that passed as a stage, the acts could only see half the room. More importantly, half the punters couldn't see the comics.
On the night, some might have said that was a blessing in disguise.
Compere Simon Clayton trotted out all the old sexist and racial stereotype routines in his warm-up. He's not really an alternative comic at all.
You might as well have had Bernard Manning up there. The only difference being that Manning would have told the gags a lot better.
The first act was James Holmes, who is a camp comic with good empathy with his audience but weak material.
He came unstuck because of that at last year's Edinburgh Festival - and only just got away with it at this little venue.
Most of his routines are about celebrity deaths - and so they quickly go out of date, leaving his act looking threadbare.
Then came comedy newcomer Dougie Dunlop, a Scot with a good range of accents and some very old gags.
After that - to my amazement - there was an interval. A couple of middling acts were promised for later, but I already had the measure of Suck It and See.
It sucks!
STAR RATING (out of five): *
John Behrens/January 1999
BUCCANEER COMEDY, The Hope, London W1
SALLY HOLLOWAY gave a good start of the night's entertainment.
Her chatty style shouldn't lead you to think that her set isn't packed with fine material - because it is.
There no waffle and some good stuff in there. She can always josh an audience successfully and watching her explain - without being crude - to an idiotic American why Tony 'Donkey' Adams's name is misleading was wonderful.
Then there was a wonderful newcomer, John Moore.
He had enormous presence and affability, which, when he finds some good material, could be devastating.
Anton, the following act, doesn't seem quite right in the head. Why does he think saying 'Doggie style' 10 times over is going to bring the house down? It was very tiresome for the rest of us.
Keith Coughtree suffered from being too quiet and whimsical, but had some good ideas percolating through.
And fabulously-glam Luis Alberto headlined with some impressions (not too many, thank God) and some surprisingly sharp sociopolitical stuff, which was a breath of fresh air.
STAR RATING (out of five): ***
Georgina Gush/January 1999
DOWNSTAIRS AT THE KING'S HEAD, CROUCH END, LONDON N8
Despite a good warm-up, Dave Thompson and Dave Holland each had a raw deal as the audience refused to shut up.
But, as always, music soothed the savage beast with Mallory and Mr Flute on fantastic form with their rude songs and delicately sinister presentation.
The evening was crowned with an appearance by Paul Thorne, blessed with a heckler at the front whom he tagged "My Little Pony".
Thorne topped the night with his mad chicken routine, which is as good a use of five minutes and one joke as you'll ever see.
STAR RATING (out of five): ***
Georgina Gush/January 1999
1998 Reviews
MADDEST TURNS OF 1998 SHOW, JOE'S COMEDY MADHOUSE, Stoke Newington, London N16
THIS was undoubtedly the craziest and funniest gig I have ever attended.
Joe Wilson handpicked some of the biggest loons on the London comedy circuit and got rising star Rob Rouse to compere - to amazing effect.
I have hardly ever seen a small crowd whipped up into such a comedy frenzy. Rouse's banter with them was nothing short of inspired lunacy and his material (including send-ups of disgraced Gary Glitter and Geoff Boycott) had them splitting their sides.
And the maddest turns of the year were extraordinary. Opener Steve Day was distinctly wacky and wasn't put off by heckles. Because he's deaf.
Tony Hindle gave us a guide to Tory party politics, using his naked arse as an illustration and Chris Hawkins discussed wanking in the newsagent's.
Molly Moron made us perform a ludicrous song in a northern accent, and Joe Wilson was at his most outrageous, screeching come-backs at hecklers.
Crazy-eyed Max Leonard did his dreadful puns and was suitably embarrassed when Rouse called him back to microphone to reveal his day job: art editor of Mayfair magazine. And the legendary Jimbo spent his act silently battling with the microphone stand.
His job was made more difficult by an obese and drunken couple who claimed to have bought the pub and insisted on screaming "You're fired" at the acts.
When they really got out of hand (insulting other members of the audience), Joe Wilson sprayed them with the fire extinguisher and threw out them out of the door - to loud cheers.
Even at the Madhouse, there's never been a night quite like it.
STAR RATING (out of five): *****
Peter Guest/December 1998
Brixton Comedy Club, The Hobgoblin, London
'FANTASTIC! Alan Davies for £5!' That's what south London's collective comedy consciousness thought and the sometimes-drafty Hobgoblin was as packed as Marks & Sparks on Christmas Eve.
Charming Mark Kelly was guest MC, hitting the right note with the audience by having them sing a chorus of "He's up his own arse" at football-crowd volume.
Splendid Jojo Smith brought a Chaucerian crudity to the event. How she gets away with her wince-inducing fanny gags I do not know, but she was very funny and kept the pissed-up boys in the front row firmly in their place.
Earl Okin was as smooth as a lounge lizard and had a balming effect on the drunks with his melodic, louche and scathing songs.
The main attraction of the night however was Alan Davies. His television appearances in the BBC drama Jonathan Creek and his solo show have raised his profile enormously, and he clearly has a lot of charm.
The shaggy hair and come-to-bed eyes and his mild manner are all endearing, and his voice is a perfect imitation of Mick Jagger's nasal whine. Davies can talk rot about the backdrop, the room and the audience and still have us tittering away. And the real material he used was excellent.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
Georgina Gush/December 1998
Murphy's Unplugged Comedy Festival, Dublin
YOU might ask how this event could fail; with Dublin being one of the most popular weekend destinations and having a strong reputation for craic, storytelling and wit.
Well, it did fail because a great idea was badly executed.
There were eight venues, ranging from the Laughter Lounge (very good theatre-style place with a receptive audience) to The Auld Dubliner, which like The Banker and McDaid's, was a great pub but absolutely useless for comedy.
I also wondered why Howard Marks was billed for one of the good venues on the Saturday night. He's not a comic - just an ex-drug dealer with PR.
Talented comic Ross Noble's telling comment on the festival was: "You can't really call them gigs. I don't know what you'd call it. It's a shambles." He was spot on.
Many of the shows ran at the same time or overlapped, so you couldn't scoot around to see the lot.
The Auld Banker was cursed with a tiny raised stage adjacent to a small room where a boozy Friday night crowd were blaring at each other as if there was nothing going on.
The area in front of the stage was packed with people being served at the bar. The comics, who looked like priests at the altar rail, were inaudible above the pub racket.
At McDaid's on the Saturday night, the gig suffered less from the room than the lighting. The powerful spotlights of the night before had been usurped by a couple of strings of domestic fairy lights (after a problem with the fuse box!)
The general feeling among punters was that the festival suffered from a complete lack of good organisation and planning.
There was big money to pay Tommy Tiernan and others. But a bit of investment in space would have reaped greater rewards.
STAR RATING (out of five): *
Georgina Gush/November 1998
Jimeoin, Cochrane Theatre, London WC1
JIMEOIN - sounds like "Jim Owen" - tickled and teased his audience to euphoria.
A native of Northern Ireland, he's obviously found his hard-won position as a millionaire superstar in Australia very congenial, so it's no wonder he can spread warmth and delight.
He sound gently Irish and his carefully-constructed laidback manner testifies to his Aussie influence.
Jimeoin's delight at the sound of words is positively Beckettian and his influence on Eddie Izzard is clear - directed rambling; going off at tangents; slightly awkward acting out of imagined scenes.
Gag-free comedy - except for one brilliant Diana joke - kept the audience very happy. What a lovely bloke!
STAR RATING (out of five): *****
Georgina Gush/November 1998
You Must Be Joking!, The Sindrome, London NW10.
THE large but shabbily attractive room was only a quarter full, perhaps because of the floor which was stickier than syrup.
And the evening was marred by a particularly obnoxious heckler who yapped her way through every act and introduction.
She was like an appallingly-behaved dog. But her boyfriend seemed to revel in her dimwitted behaviour and someone from the club kept saying: "She's not a plant."
Wonderful Glaswegian comic Stu Who was amusing and joshing and had some great stories, Trevor Crook did a sterling job, and oh-so-slick Sean Meo delivered a laugh every 10 seconds.
It would be nice to see this venue succeed.
STAR RATING (out of five): ***
Georgina Gush/November 1998
Hobgoblin Comedy, Brixton, London
THIS feisty little club goes from strength to strength. Compere Ivor Dembina showed remarkable form with new material and good banter.
Ronnie Golden performed an end-of-the-pier sort of set, but was not overgenerous with his musical contributions - a shame because it's what he does best.
Simon Evans, caddish in shot velvet, really raised the roof with his measured sarcasm and a lot of new material.
And Simon Bligh was excellent and brimming with energy for a sleep-deprived new dad.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
Georgina Gush/November 1998
The Improv, Los Angeles
THIS is where Robin Williams and Steve Martin cut their comedy teeth. But on tonight's showing all I can do is thank God for British comics because the future would be very grim indeed if left in the hands of the churls and bigots on display at this illustrious venue.
Mind you, Bless with Ted, whose gimmick is his wonderful mane of reddish-golden curls, was an excellent compere and the evening started promisingly with his effevescent silliness building up the audience to a pitch of merry expectation. Unfortunately he was the only plum in the pudding.
Willy Barsena sailed through some Italian-American stereotyping; Chris Spencer was pleasant but unmemorable; and Steve Marmel hated and wished death on everyone, Jews and gangsta rappers included.
Alan Harvey was like John Goodman without the twinkle, and Charlie Fleischer, supposed the top act of the night, was a vile, lascivious Quasimodo.
Fleischer had hardly any material, structuring his act around abuse to those in the front row - and opening a hapless bride-to-be's wedding shower on stage!.
Most the acts mocked the audience in vicious and jeering terms. And they asked exactly the same questions of the same people, treating the men with derision and leering at their girlfriends.
Tucked away safely at the back of the room, I achieved a comedy first for me and found myself falling asleep.
STAR RATING (out of five): *
Georgina Gush/October 1998
MARY BOURKE, BUCCANEERS, THE HOPE, W1
TOO often female comics hide behind a persona - whether girlie or ghastly - but Mary has the confidence to dispense with that nonsense.
She can hold her own in a 10 to 15 minute spot. Her affable presence and the fact that you're not dealing with a half-baked character idea makes you almost forget that some of the material is a bit average: being dumped; women who won't go down; men as financial tickets; and teachers' jokes.
But funny/average is better than many newish comedians achieve.
STAR RATING (out of five): **and a half.
Georgina Gush/October 1998
THE HOBGOBLIN, BRIXTON
AFTER an extended break, it was good to see this venue up and running again. Compere Ivor Dembina was affable without being ingratiating and did a fine job of making it a friendly night.
First out of the traps was comic magacian Otiz Canelloni. I like magic and would have been grateful for a few more tricks. But there was no spark or surprise to his act. I haven't seen him for 12 years and was surprised he hasn't become more polished or acquired better comic chat over that long period.
Next came Brendon Burns - what a ranting boy he is! But attitude is no substitute for good material. Laughs were slow in coming and I'm not ashamed to contradict his supposition that it was the audience's fault.
Finally, there was a great surprise, Hoopal! - a double act of men in suits; one man pudding-faced, the other almost as narrow as an axe head. They treated us to some excellent, silly clowning - messing around with wet towels and tennis balls.
The audience roared with laughter and the night ended on a high note. Let's see more of them!
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ***
Georgina Gush/October 1998
DAVID KEAY, BUCCANEERS COMEDY, LONDON W1
DAVID KEAY is a young Scottish comedian who's been doing well on the London circuit for the last 16 months - but on this occasion he was shit.
He incurred maximum black marks by embarrassing two women in the audience - dissecting them without kindness or wit but with a bully's confidence.
If he'd made the same comments in conversation in a pub, someone would probably have punched his lights out.
Having ripped open his shirt, played with his nipples, and treated us to a verse of 'Flower of Scotland', he offered to perform any song we liked. Can't you get this sort of thing on the Kilburn High Road (London's Irish quarter) any night of the week?
But they don't call it 'comedy', just 'sad'.
Keay didn't do a jot of proper material and his artless apology afterwards - 'I don't know what came over me - it's been a hell of a week' - didn't restore him to grace with the bored and appalled audience.
On this night, the Cream of Scotland was definitely sour - a shameful abuse of real talent.
STAR RATING (out of five): ZERO
Georgina Gush/September 1998
AL MURRAY, PUB LANDLORD - Keeper of the Pint Cosmic, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
THIS was a vintage Pub Landlord performance by a brilliant character comedian at the peak of his powers.
The hour flew by as Murray showed just how far he's managed to take his creation. No shortage of material here; he has acres of it.
And his interaction with the audience was so spontaneous and funny even Murray was laughing at it.
I say fuck the Perrier panel!
I dread to think what the Pub Landlord would say about those purveyors of over-priced fizzy water.
We're awarding the truly magnificent Al Murray the Stand-up Comedy London Award for Best Act of the 1998 Edinburgh Comedy Festival
Well done, landlord!
STAR RATING (out of five): ****** (SIX)
THE upstairs room at this West End pub is a decent size, with a bar, low lighting and country beams everywhere.
MC Mark Felgate hit the right note of friendliness, energy and pace; he warmed up the audience without hogging 'act' time.
First-on David Caruana was affable and is definitely becoming more of a performer than a bloke telling stories.
Eve Guthrie looked very new and young and lacked presentation skills. But she had some good material and a quiet confidence about her.
Aussie Tony Bailey had some excellent and intelligent gags but needs more oomph. He has to find his comedy legs after taking a year to get to England. (If the plane had gone any slower, it'd have fallen out of the sky).
Then we were treated to Phil Davey, loudly confident with some interesting thoughts on sleep. He's a top act and put a buzz into the room.
The next two acts, Juliet Cowan and Belinda Merriman, both looked great, had presence and tried to perform would-be shocking material. But it was a bit coy: adolescent girls shrieking on the bus stuff.
Finally, headliner Ian Stone came hotfoot from the Comedy Store, just round the corner. His humour was Jewish but not exclusively so. He was very bright and relaxed.
Overall, a splendid night for this new club.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
Georgina Gush / February 1999
Mickey Flanagan, Buccaneers, London W1
IT was a good night with the audience outnumbering the acts - something that hasn't happened in a long time.
And Mickey Flanagan - who looks like such a nice boy - did a hysterical routine on the East End, world travellers and kinky sex.
I really shouldn't approve but he's extraordinarily funny. It's hard to see how someone retains their charm while delving in gross areas, but he does. If he dropped the f-word, we could be talking TV.
The other acts were also good. Paul Sinha put in a polished few minutes, which would be even better if he moved away from punning; Shappi Khorsandi was infectiously funny and smiley; and with a bit move focus on ordering his act David Keay would be brilliant.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
Georgina Gush / February 1999
Mitch Benn, Buccaneer Comedy, London W1
MITCH BENN had the audience falling about with his tried and trusted song "Crap Shag" and an excellent new song about an audience's fear of the musical comic.
But for someone who can assemble such killer lyrics, his patter between numbers and joke-telling is curiously defensive - as though he knows he is weak without accompaniment.
His playing and songwriting is so strong, however, it's easy to glide over these moments.
Benn's well-deserved encore - Perfect Day as sung on the BBC promo by 40 voices - was amazing. On its own it should silence any carping critics of musical comedy.
STAR RATING (out of five): ***
Georgina Gush / February 1999
The Red Rose Comedy Club, Finsbury Park, London N7
SATURDAY night at the Red Rose - one of London's most famous comedy venues, now back under the stewardship of its progenitor Ivor Dembina.
Dembina is a curious character: a little bespectacled man who seems to carry the woes of the world on his shoulders.
But he knows how to run a great club.
In the few months since his return, the large room behind the Labour club in Finsbury Park has cackled with comedy. Now his audience is reaching its "critical mass" of 120ish, the Red Rose is becoming a top gig once again.
As a compere, Dembina has the most extraordinary style. Most professional MCs exude confidence and look absolutely bullet proof.
Dembo's approach is to carry his vulnerability and self-doubt on stage with him, allowing him to question the audience without posing a threat to them. The comedy then stems from his quick wit in turning their answers into jokes.
He used a girl's boast that she'd just spent £200 on buying bras to great effect. ("50 quid a bra, 25 a tit!").
That led to a whole string of quips that warmed up the audience very nicely.
First on, Andy Parsons was a crowd pleaser, although not to my taste. He shouts and swears too much and that detracted from his performance; his material (cereal packet instructions, grumpy old people etc.) was neither clever nor original; and his yobby persona didn't really ring true.
Drew Barr was far worse. He boasted a smart suit but very weak material. And with the audience, he dipped alarmingly until only a handful of people were laughing at his jaded routines.
You can't get away with feeble jokes about flying and getting drunk any longer. To be brutally honest, Barr wasn't really up to playing the Red Rose.
True pro Martin Coyote turned the evening. He has a lovely manner and some very good routines.
And headliner Simon Bligh was absolutely outstanding. I love his technique; leaving the microphone in the stand and acting out his flights of fancy around it. He picked on audience members but left them feeling good about themselves. And he was topical without being boring.
There's no doubt Bligh is a real gem of a club comic - worth the £6 admission fee on his own.
Overall it was a very good night's entertainment in an atmosphere that was unusually sexy for a comedy venue.
The Red Rose is an important club and it and Ivor Dembina deserve all the public support they can get.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
January 1999
Buccaneers Comedy, The Hope, London W1
I ARRIVED late and swelled the paying audience by 20 per cent. But I was in time for the very pleasant and funny Lucy Baylor who looked slimmer and bendier after birth than I have since the age of 14.
Mandy Muden was nearly hoisted by her own petard when her lascivious patter induced an American to strip to his boxer shorts! Her wonky tricks are always appealing.
Very confident David Kelly spread his little good material with great skill and excellent magician Danny Buckler used audience members without embarrassing or humiliating them.
After his commended performance on Channel 4, he deserves a bigger audience.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
Georgina Gush/January 1999
SUCK IT AND SEE, BAR LATINO, Islington, London N1
EVERYONE with a guitar amp, microphone stand and access to a bar seems to want to launch a comedy club these days. Stand-up isn't the new rock 'n' roll - it's the new karaoke!
And the opening night of Suck It and See was a first-rate demonstration of how NOT to do it.
First, the room - a garishly-painted nightclub - is totally unsuited to comedy.
From the soap box that passed as a stage, the acts could only see half the room. More importantly, half the punters couldn't see the comics.
On the night, some might have said that was a blessing in disguise.
Compere Simon Clayton trotted out all the old sexist and racial stereotype routines in his warm-up. He's not really an alternative comic at all.
You might as well have had Bernard Manning up there. The only difference being that Manning would have told the gags a lot better.
The first act was James Holmes, who is a camp comic with good empathy with his audience but weak material.
He came unstuck because of that at last year's Edinburgh Festival - and only just got away with it at this little venue.
Most of his routines are about celebrity deaths - and so they quickly go out of date, leaving his act looking threadbare.
Then came comedy newcomer Dougie Dunlop, a Scot with a good range of accents and some very old gags.
After that - to my amazement - there was an interval. A couple of middling acts were promised for later, but I already had the measure of Suck It and See.
It sucks!
STAR RATING (out of five): *
John Behrens/January 1999
BUCCANEER COMEDY, The Hope, London W1
SALLY HOLLOWAY gave a good start of the night's entertainment.
Her chatty style shouldn't lead you to think that her set isn't packed with fine material - because it is.
There no waffle and some good stuff in there. She can always josh an audience successfully and watching her explain - without being crude - to an idiotic American why Tony 'Donkey' Adams's name is misleading was wonderful.
Then there was a wonderful newcomer, John Moore.
He had enormous presence and affability, which, when he finds some good material, could be devastating.
Anton, the following act, doesn't seem quite right in the head. Why does he think saying 'Doggie style' 10 times over is going to bring the house down? It was very tiresome for the rest of us.
Keith Coughtree suffered from being too quiet and whimsical, but had some good ideas percolating through.
And fabulously-glam Luis Alberto headlined with some impressions (not too many, thank God) and some surprisingly sharp sociopolitical stuff, which was a breath of fresh air.
STAR RATING (out of five): ***
Georgina Gush/January 1999
DOWNSTAIRS AT THE KING'S HEAD, CROUCH END, LONDON N8
Despite a good warm-up, Dave Thompson and Dave Holland each had a raw deal as the audience refused to shut up.
But, as always, music soothed the savage beast with Mallory and Mr Flute on fantastic form with their rude songs and delicately sinister presentation.
The evening was crowned with an appearance by Paul Thorne, blessed with a heckler at the front whom he tagged "My Little Pony".
Thorne topped the night with his mad chicken routine, which is as good a use of five minutes and one joke as you'll ever see.
STAR RATING (out of five): ***
Georgina Gush/January 1999
1998 Reviews
MADDEST TURNS OF 1998 SHOW, JOE'S COMEDY MADHOUSE, Stoke Newington, London N16
THIS was undoubtedly the craziest and funniest gig I have ever attended.
Joe Wilson handpicked some of the biggest loons on the London comedy circuit and got rising star Rob Rouse to compere - to amazing effect.
I have hardly ever seen a small crowd whipped up into such a comedy frenzy. Rouse's banter with them was nothing short of inspired lunacy and his material (including send-ups of disgraced Gary Glitter and Geoff Boycott) had them splitting their sides.
And the maddest turns of the year were extraordinary. Opener Steve Day was distinctly wacky and wasn't put off by heckles. Because he's deaf.
Tony Hindle gave us a guide to Tory party politics, using his naked arse as an illustration and Chris Hawkins discussed wanking in the newsagent's.
Molly Moron made us perform a ludicrous song in a northern accent, and Joe Wilson was at his most outrageous, screeching come-backs at hecklers.
Crazy-eyed Max Leonard did his dreadful puns and was suitably embarrassed when Rouse called him back to microphone to reveal his day job: art editor of Mayfair magazine. And the legendary Jimbo spent his act silently battling with the microphone stand.
His job was made more difficult by an obese and drunken couple who claimed to have bought the pub and insisted on screaming "You're fired" at the acts.
When they really got out of hand (insulting other members of the audience), Joe Wilson sprayed them with the fire extinguisher and threw out them out of the door - to loud cheers.
Even at the Madhouse, there's never been a night quite like it.
STAR RATING (out of five): *****
Peter Guest/December 1998
Brixton Comedy Club, The Hobgoblin, London
'FANTASTIC! Alan Davies for £5!' That's what south London's collective comedy consciousness thought and the sometimes-drafty Hobgoblin was as packed as Marks & Sparks on Christmas Eve.
Charming Mark Kelly was guest MC, hitting the right note with the audience by having them sing a chorus of "He's up his own arse" at football-crowd volume.
Splendid Jojo Smith brought a Chaucerian crudity to the event. How she gets away with her wince-inducing fanny gags I do not know, but she was very funny and kept the pissed-up boys in the front row firmly in their place.
Earl Okin was as smooth as a lounge lizard and had a balming effect on the drunks with his melodic, louche and scathing songs.
The main attraction of the night however was Alan Davies. His television appearances in the BBC drama Jonathan Creek and his solo show have raised his profile enormously, and he clearly has a lot of charm.
The shaggy hair and come-to-bed eyes and his mild manner are all endearing, and his voice is a perfect imitation of Mick Jagger's nasal whine. Davies can talk rot about the backdrop, the room and the audience and still have us tittering away. And the real material he used was excellent.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
Georgina Gush/December 1998
Murphy's Unplugged Comedy Festival, Dublin
YOU might ask how this event could fail; with Dublin being one of the most popular weekend destinations and having a strong reputation for craic, storytelling and wit.
Well, it did fail because a great idea was badly executed.
There were eight venues, ranging from the Laughter Lounge (very good theatre-style place with a receptive audience) to The Auld Dubliner, which like The Banker and McDaid's, was a great pub but absolutely useless for comedy.
I also wondered why Howard Marks was billed for one of the good venues on the Saturday night. He's not a comic - just an ex-drug dealer with PR.
Talented comic Ross Noble's telling comment on the festival was: "You can't really call them gigs. I don't know what you'd call it. It's a shambles." He was spot on.
Many of the shows ran at the same time or overlapped, so you couldn't scoot around to see the lot.
The Auld Banker was cursed with a tiny raised stage adjacent to a small room where a boozy Friday night crowd were blaring at each other as if there was nothing going on.
The area in front of the stage was packed with people being served at the bar. The comics, who looked like priests at the altar rail, were inaudible above the pub racket.
At McDaid's on the Saturday night, the gig suffered less from the room than the lighting. The powerful spotlights of the night before had been usurped by a couple of strings of domestic fairy lights (after a problem with the fuse box!)
The general feeling among punters was that the festival suffered from a complete lack of good organisation and planning.
There was big money to pay Tommy Tiernan and others. But a bit of investment in space would have reaped greater rewards.
STAR RATING (out of five): *
Georgina Gush/November 1998
Jimeoin, Cochrane Theatre, London WC1
JIMEOIN - sounds like "Jim Owen" - tickled and teased his audience to euphoria.
A native of Northern Ireland, he's obviously found his hard-won position as a millionaire superstar in Australia very congenial, so it's no wonder he can spread warmth and delight.
He sound gently Irish and his carefully-constructed laidback manner testifies to his Aussie influence.
Jimeoin's delight at the sound of words is positively Beckettian and his influence on Eddie Izzard is clear - directed rambling; going off at tangents; slightly awkward acting out of imagined scenes.
Gag-free comedy - except for one brilliant Diana joke - kept the audience very happy. What a lovely bloke!
STAR RATING (out of five): *****
Georgina Gush/November 1998
You Must Be Joking!, The Sindrome, London NW10.
THE large but shabbily attractive room was only a quarter full, perhaps because of the floor which was stickier than syrup.
And the evening was marred by a particularly obnoxious heckler who yapped her way through every act and introduction.
She was like an appallingly-behaved dog. But her boyfriend seemed to revel in her dimwitted behaviour and someone from the club kept saying: "She's not a plant."
Wonderful Glaswegian comic Stu Who was amusing and joshing and had some great stories, Trevor Crook did a sterling job, and oh-so-slick Sean Meo delivered a laugh every 10 seconds.
It would be nice to see this venue succeed.
STAR RATING (out of five): ***
Georgina Gush/November 1998
Hobgoblin Comedy, Brixton, London
THIS feisty little club goes from strength to strength. Compere Ivor Dembina showed remarkable form with new material and good banter.
Ronnie Golden performed an end-of-the-pier sort of set, but was not overgenerous with his musical contributions - a shame because it's what he does best.
Simon Evans, caddish in shot velvet, really raised the roof with his measured sarcasm and a lot of new material.
And Simon Bligh was excellent and brimming with energy for a sleep-deprived new dad.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
Georgina Gush/November 1998
The Improv, Los Angeles
THIS is where Robin Williams and Steve Martin cut their comedy teeth. But on tonight's showing all I can do is thank God for British comics because the future would be very grim indeed if left in the hands of the churls and bigots on display at this illustrious venue.
Mind you, Bless with Ted, whose gimmick is his wonderful mane of reddish-golden curls, was an excellent compere and the evening started promisingly with his effevescent silliness building up the audience to a pitch of merry expectation. Unfortunately he was the only plum in the pudding.
Willy Barsena sailed through some Italian-American stereotyping; Chris Spencer was pleasant but unmemorable; and Steve Marmel hated and wished death on everyone, Jews and gangsta rappers included.
Alan Harvey was like John Goodman without the twinkle, and Charlie Fleischer, supposed the top act of the night, was a vile, lascivious Quasimodo.
Fleischer had hardly any material, structuring his act around abuse to those in the front row - and opening a hapless bride-to-be's wedding shower on stage!.
Most the acts mocked the audience in vicious and jeering terms. And they asked exactly the same questions of the same people, treating the men with derision and leering at their girlfriends.
Tucked away safely at the back of the room, I achieved a comedy first for me and found myself falling asleep.
STAR RATING (out of five): *
Georgina Gush/October 1998
MARY BOURKE, BUCCANEERS, THE HOPE, W1
TOO often female comics hide behind a persona - whether girlie or ghastly - but Mary has the confidence to dispense with that nonsense.
She can hold her own in a 10 to 15 minute spot. Her affable presence and the fact that you're not dealing with a half-baked character idea makes you almost forget that some of the material is a bit average: being dumped; women who won't go down; men as financial tickets; and teachers' jokes.
But funny/average is better than many newish comedians achieve.
STAR RATING (out of five): **and a half.
Georgina Gush/October 1998
THE HOBGOBLIN, BRIXTON
AFTER an extended break, it was good to see this venue up and running again. Compere Ivor Dembina was affable without being ingratiating and did a fine job of making it a friendly night.
First out of the traps was comic magacian Otiz Canelloni. I like magic and would have been grateful for a few more tricks. But there was no spark or surprise to his act. I haven't seen him for 12 years and was surprised he hasn't become more polished or acquired better comic chat over that long period.
Next came Brendon Burns - what a ranting boy he is! But attitude is no substitute for good material. Laughs were slow in coming and I'm not ashamed to contradict his supposition that it was the audience's fault.
Finally, there was a great surprise, Hoopal! - a double act of men in suits; one man pudding-faced, the other almost as narrow as an axe head. They treated us to some excellent, silly clowning - messing around with wet towels and tennis balls.
The audience roared with laughter and the night ended on a high note. Let's see more of them!
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ***
Georgina Gush/October 1998
DAVID KEAY, BUCCANEERS COMEDY, LONDON W1
DAVID KEAY is a young Scottish comedian who's been doing well on the London circuit for the last 16 months - but on this occasion he was shit.
He incurred maximum black marks by embarrassing two women in the audience - dissecting them without kindness or wit but with a bully's confidence.
If he'd made the same comments in conversation in a pub, someone would probably have punched his lights out.
Having ripped open his shirt, played with his nipples, and treated us to a verse of 'Flower of Scotland', he offered to perform any song we liked. Can't you get this sort of thing on the Kilburn High Road (London's Irish quarter) any night of the week?
But they don't call it 'comedy', just 'sad'.
Keay didn't do a jot of proper material and his artless apology afterwards - 'I don't know what came over me - it's been a hell of a week' - didn't restore him to grace with the bored and appalled audience.
On this night, the Cream of Scotland was definitely sour - a shameful abuse of real talent.
STAR RATING (out of five): ZERO
Georgina Gush/September 1998
AL MURRAY, PUB LANDLORD - Keeper of the Pint Cosmic, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
THIS was a vintage Pub Landlord performance by a brilliant character comedian at the peak of his powers.
The hour flew by as Murray showed just how far he's managed to take his creation. No shortage of material here; he has acres of it.
And his interaction with the audience was so spontaneous and funny even Murray was laughing at it.
I say fuck the Perrier panel!
I dread to think what the Pub Landlord would say about those purveyors of over-priced fizzy water.
We're awarding the truly magnificent Al Murray the Stand-up Comedy London Award for Best Act of the 1998 Edinburgh Comedy Festival
Well done, landlord!
STAR RATING (out of five): ****** (SIX)
April - August 1998
KEVIN HAYES, The Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh Fringe
Comedy Festival
AFFABLE Irishman Kevin Hayes has been appearing in two shows - and excelling in both.
Education met wit in Beyond The Pale (A History of Ireland) in which he achieved one of the toughest tasks a comedian can set himself: teaching an audience history while amusing and entertaining them.
It was a truly outstanding show; one of the most thoroughly-enjoyable hours I've spent in Edinburgh and a joy to attend.
His late-night straight stand-up performance, at the Stand as well, was also excellent. And I'd say not a single punter there would disagree with that assessment.
STAR RATING (out of five): *****
August 1998
IVOR DEMBINA and IAN COGNITO, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
WAS it supposed to be an honour that these big cheeses of the London comedy circuit put on a late free-entry show?
Their contrasting styles - Ivor, disingenously diffident and intellectual; Ian, ranting arsehole - made them an obvious, albeit uncomfortable, pairing.
But what they both forgot on one of the most important nights of the festival was that comedians are meant to be funny.
The midnight performance started very low key: I thought Dembina was going to compere a little and then introduce the so-called 'fierce and funny' Cognito.
But no, he gave us a runaround of British Judaism in the 1990s. Nothing wrong with that. No doubt Dominic Lawson would have enjoyed it immensely. But I suspect the Edinburgh audience had come to laugh.
Dembina also made the mistake of getting into a debate with a drunken critic who wanted to smoke. He ended up accused of fascism by the journalist and slipped from the stage with hardly a word to say in his defence.
It was a piss-poor start to the show, but worse was to come.
Cognito shattered the embarrassed silence with an unfunny rant of a performance worthy of a tube train nutter.
The tedious account of dragging himself up by his bootstraps, marital shipwreck, hollowness of fame (has he ever been famous?), great drugs he's done (where have we heard that before?), was indistinguishable from the blether of a thousand pub bores rolled into one spitting, sweating ball of bitterness.
Successful comics Nick Wilty and Stuart Lee were in the audience and didn't laugh much.
And I'm angry now I gave as much as an old button to the silent collection at the end of the show. There are plenty of street beggars more deserving of the cash than these two smug conmen.
Cognito should go back into the retirement he so richly deserves.
As for sad old Dembina, he's committing comedy suicide on the circuit by nottelling jokes.
Perhaps, old comics never die; they just go a bit senile and become an embarrassment to anyone who knows them.
STAR RATING (out of five): ZERO
-- GEORGINA GUSH / August 1998
LEE MACK, Return of the Mack, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
THE publicity for this show portrayed Mack sending up a rap star: an image followed through by a short film sequence - shown before the performance - of him donning rap gear.
But it all proved a gimmick. When Mack appeared before the tiny audience (about 30 people in a 150-capacity room), he was casually dressed and trotted out his regular routines, almost none of them involving rap.
Nonetheless, he is energetic and his material is strong, although there wasn't enough top-notch stuff to fill an hour-long show.
STAR RATING (for talent and potential): **** (out of five)
/August 1998
BOOTHBY GRAFFOE, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
THE best thing about this show was newish comic Simon Evans as a stooge in the audience. Otherwise, it came down to a couple of songs, unspontaneous rapartee and adolescent sketches.
Graffoe's material was thinly spread and his references to past glowing reviews made one wonder how on earth he has achieved his high profile.
He may be excellent over 30 minutes, but an hour-long show makes him diffuse and ill-tempered. He even resorted to dragging in dope-smoking to win a knowing cheer.
It's time for him to do something new.
STAR RATING (out of five): **
-- GEORGINA GUSH/August 1998
MIKE GUNN, Good Grief, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
GUNN was one of the acts I most wanted to see. . . but turned out the most disappointing.
His material was quite good but his performance was amazingly weak for a comedian of his experience.
Gunn seemed more camp than deadpan - like a comedic Dale Winton clad as a funeral director. And his handling of hecklers was cliched. He wasn't thinking on his feet and, as a result, was half-dying on his arse.
No wonder only 10 punters had come to see him.
STAR RATING (out of five): **
August 1998
RICH HALL, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
WOW! This show proved why the established guys hold their own against the young tyros.
It was slick, topical, political, well paced and well funny.
Some silly but genuinely amusing songs made it a sheer delight - and a good reason why Hall should give masterclasses to young comics.
The secret is in the writing and the realisation that you shouldn't expect to get by on charm alone.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
-- GEORGINA GUSH/August 1998
THE COMEDY ZONE, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
THIS was definitely one of the most over-rated shows of the festival. Four newish comics did their best to join the big boys of comedy, but looked hopelessly out of their depth.
Dan Evans seemed uncomfortable as the compere, desperately rattling out his own material rather than concentrating on interaction with the audience.
Anton did his joke (doggy style). It's high time he wrote another gag. His shambling image is effective but you can't help wondering if he's genuinely a bit of a Scouse fuckwit.
Gorden Southern's act wasn't bad. He's an assured performer and has some sharp and funny lines. But he's better seen in a small venue.
And headliner Simon Evans was enjoyable. He trotted out his familiar act with great confidence and precision and was undoubtedly the best of a mediocre bunch.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): **and a bit
SEAN LOCK, 'Hello Mums', Battersea Art Centre (Short BAC and Sides) London SW11
BLOKEY is the obvious adjective for Sean; he's not a style guru, not Oxbridge mafia (in presentation, I don't know his true credentials). Good natured geezerhood rules.
On an unfeasibly sweaty night - so hot that Harry Hill took off his baseball cap, in a blackbox auditorium where the air-conditioning must have been provided by a toxic dragon - we started with a film of various members of the Lock family dancing against a white background. Very art school, not very funny, but setting up for a cracking gag when Sean got on.
He has a good balance of meandering chat and big tags - the 50-minute format allowing him to develop strands of thought rather than demand a big laugh every 10 seconds.
Obviously still a work in progress (which must be a bit scary for him, with Edinburgh just two weeks away), the first half is stronger than the second, which has some good stories that definitely are in search of closure.
Personal favourite was the cat-stretching routine, but some work on the girlfriend routines is in order to make them less ordinary. It's all very well seeming like the funny guy down the pub, but if you're Sean Lock, you have to be bigger and better.
Definitely worth catching if you're up there, or in one of the squillion previews down here.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ***
-- GEORGINA GUSH/July 1998
Lee Canterbury, Natalie Haynes and Addy Borg, COMEDY AT SOHO HO, Crown and Two Chairmen, W1
THESE three comics are not presenting a show together in Edinburgh, although each will be there in a bill show of some description. (Lee Canterbury is in the Daily Telegraph Open Mic finals, Addy is compering one of Screaming Blue Murder's superb Big Value Comedy Shows, and Natalie's in another show).
Last night was a chance for each to bash through up to 20 minutes of material, with no heckling (we'd been told, and amazingly everyone behaved as though at a Sunday tea with a rich aunt - laughing at every joke and glossing over any embarrassing moments).
Even better with no interval and no compere, this was a tight hour of entertainment without any of the stock in trade Q &A with an audience which can drain energy from a gig.
Lee Canterbury, has a former incarnation as a holiday rep, and I can well believe it. So good-natured and smiley and full of bounce you want to hide in the sand dunes. He had the hard job in opening, and his material, recalling '70s animal progs, disco and teen angst was amusing but somehow dated - not so much nostalgia, more a lack of development.
He tore through a short set and lost some material just through garbling.
Natalie Haynes has the making of a good comic, she's got tons of material and doesn't depending on a gurrl-gimmick to get laughs.
She raced along as though complete amnesia were just a heart beat away and if she didn't spit all the material out it would go forever.
As with much relationship humour, which can be so poignant, it sailed perilously close to therapy, covering revenge, betrayal, mercy shags and the anxiety about parents seeing the show.
Natalie is funny, like most women are, talking about personal life, but she just has give it an extra push to be more a performer and less the amusing dinner companion.
Finally to Addy Borg, polishing some old material, still funny on its tenth hearing, spicing it up with new stuff. This man has the ready-brek glow of the confident comic.
Falling on the good-looking side of odd (think Marty Feldman meets Antonio Banderas), he relaxes the audience by enjoying himself, without ever lapsing into smugness.
He's excellent with an audience who are on his side - can't wait to see him in Edinburgh with a bigger and more lippy crowd to put him on his mettle.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ***
-- GEORGINA GUSH/July 1998
ED BYRNE and STUART LEE, The Banana Cabaret, SW12
STUART LEE is so thrilled with having had a long stint on telly that he bases half his act on people he's been told he looks like.
How deeply thrilling for us that he has been likened to pop star Roland Gift and Mark Fowler from EastEnders.
His languor sails perilously close to lazy and I was struggling to work out why he has acquired celebrity status. Having been cursed, by his own admission, with a sarcastic sounding voice, he could at least smile.
He's like a sneery adolescent boy that most mums would dread being brought home by their little girls.
By contrast, Ed Byrne would be the one that they're making sandwiches for and showing the baby pictures to.
Twenty-six going on 18, he's got shy charm worked out to a 'T': he's energetic, chatty, natural seeming.
Even when he's talking about wanking, you get the feeling that mum would be giggling behind her hand rather than disapproving.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ***
-- GEORGINA GUSH
STAND UP TWO, COMEDY CAFE, EC1
RICHARD MORTON hosted this recording for a Radio Two show, warming up the stodgy audience with energy and aplomb.
Gentle Kevin Gildea did some amusing relationship stuff, Trevor Crook entertained with whales and butterflies - and Parsons and Naylor died on their arses, very much to their own surprise.
Song titles as conversation harks back to Punt and Dennis of 12 years ago. Must try harder. Lucrative advertising contracts obviously make you lazy.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): **
-- GEORGINA GUSH
CHARLOTTE PALMER at Buccaneers Comedy, W1
WHAT is wrong with Charlotte Palmer? Blah blah tampons, blah blah vibrators, blah blah genitalia. Then she turns into Mary Poppins, getting out her flute to play Ski Sunday. Get lost, Charlotte!
I'm sure there's a market for people who enjoy your brand of anatomically accurate humour, but they are probably sweating over their GCSEs and not old enough to go into a pub anyway.
And squealing girley-style at the audience that they're all crazy is not going to get up the energy (your avowed intent).
If you're too tired to perform, stand aside for someone who isn't. Mind you, I suspect a long kip wouldn't make an iota of difference to Palmer. She's been trotting this garbage out for more than a year. Remember, Jenny Eclair was doing it four years ago, and it wasn't funny then either. Get an act, Charlotte, or get another career!
But it wasn't all bunk at the Buccaneer. New act Mike Meakin showed strong stage presence which bodes well for when his material comes in.
Kevin Precious has been around for longer and has a relaxed, daffy presentation, and credits his audience with enough intelligence not to have to spell out every punchline.
Noel James, cursed in London what's on guide Time Out a few weeks ago with the tag of "a comedian's comedian", gave the lie to that dreadful description which normally means enormously unfunny.
He is surreal and gets away with punning, throwing away enough good quips for the comedy scavengers to swoop in and knit themselves an extra five minutes. And Noel boasts a likeable, schoolboy charm which tickles away at an audience, almost persuading them to let him off doing his homework. However, he skates through on charisma - and it's no substitute for putting in more work on the writing.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ***
-- GEORGINA GUSH
FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY AT JOE'S COMEDY MADHOUSE, LONDON N16
NORTH LONDON'S quirkiest comedy club did not disappoint as it celebrated its first birthday in typically eccentric style.
Talented Rob Rouse opened the show with a rousing half-hour set which was truly at the cutting edge. Few young stand-ups have the energy or pluck that he displays in everything from his highly controversial (often taboo) material to the extraordinary musical finale.
Rouse is one of the few newish acts on the London circuit who really looks like he has stardom written all over him.
Then there was a string of shorter performances: Danny Hurst struggled a little but Mick Twelves fared better with some top gags; musical impressionist Pamela Philips went down well.
Compere Michael Eaves kept the night bubbling along, only losing his temper with the wretched Enis who virtually refused to leave the stage!
As Joe Wilson explained when he handed round undercooked birthday cake he had baked himself, lunacy is every bit as much a part of the Madhouse as comedy - a fact illustrated by the prehistoric Dennis "Two-brushes" Ahearn who came out of retirement for another public grooming of his hair.
But no-one could doubt the comedy talent of the highline act Micky Flanagan who had kicked off the club exactly a year before.
His hilarious repartee with the audience, and particularly one drunken heckler, showed the remarkable degree to which he can think on his feet to superb comedic effect. Flanagan's 35-minute performance was one of the finest and funniest I have seen on any comedy stage.
STAR RATING (out of five): *****
-- PETER GUEST
ROLLY MOE at the Buccaneers Comedy, W1.
THE BUCCANEERS again - one of my fave clubs - where compere Andy Laud could give George Clooney handsome lessons, but can't warm-up a TV dinner - never mind an audience.
And so on to the dishonourable Rolly Moe. This whip thin character is a glutton for punishment.
I saw him buried by a silent walk-out by six people at a club a few weeks ago, and why the Buccaneers' crowd didn't flee to the bar for the Brazil match I do not know.
His ultra-slow, high-pitched delivery and strangled wheezing is reminiscent of Emo Phillips of blessed memory.
But unlike musicians, comedians are not allowed to be a one-man tribute-band.
Moe borrows his vocal style from Emo, and his sartorial presentation is that of the skinny fundamentalist preacher from David Byrne's 'Once in a Lifetime' video.
Why does he imagine it's funny to be as dislocated as a male loony on the bus and offering horribly to flirt with lone women in the audience?
This is like being caught up in the grimmest performance in a seventies cafe-theatre.
Whatever private agenda he is working out, it should not see the light of day.
Avoid at all costs!
STAR RATING (out of five): *
-- GEORGINA GUSH
THE IMPROV, LONDON W1
WHAT a night to be in the audience at this club in Tottenham Court Road! I was one of only 20 seated in London's most comfy barn.
Phil Davey, an acclimatised aussie, managed to talk to everyone in his role as MC - playing with a table of travelling Americans to great success without boring the rest of the audience.
Roly poly Andre Vincent, looking ten years younger than he did three months ago (amazing what a trip to San Francisco can do), raised the energy with a cheeky set about fat lads, obese women, the Titanic, and Louise Woodward as the next James Bond.
How these two guys stayed so good humoured playing to a couple of acres of check table-cloth I don't know, but they didn't moan at the audience like lesser comics might have done. They worked hard and brought us in to them.
Best of all was Trevor Crook. He makes a virtue of inertia and doesn't "do animated".
His ability to captivate an audience with a set on depression, S & M, bad marriages, Socrates and whales was as funny and original as anything you'll see this year.
Never before has calculated lethargy been so endearing.
The antithesis of the brutally-loud, bronzed Australian, he is slight, scruffy and softly spoken (anything else would be too much effort).
And Crook appears like a nocturnal animal blinking in the spotlight, the occasional lifting grin being the give-away that he's rather enjoying himself.
He only had to depart from his ambling, story-of-his-life approach to sort out a bunch of yappy barristers (I think they'd seen This Life once too often and fancied themselves.)
He gave the legal beagles the attention they'd been courting, snuffed them out and proceeded with the only successful unscripted, Q & A session I've ever seen. Ace!
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
-- GEORGINA GUSH
NELSON COMEDY CLUB, South Wimbledon
Ooh, what a chatty lot they are down at the newly stripped and scrubbed Nelson.
It was compered by the splendid Mandy Muden who scored highly on organising the audience, jazzing them up and launching the acts with unforced warmth.
Brian Damage's world-weary songs (or should I say song, since everything comes out to the same plinka-plinka tune) and deliberately lacklustre repartee cut through the table of students obviously used to entertainment with a pause and rewind button.
Danny Buckler impressed the hell out of anyone who was paying attention with a bit of magical escapology before our very eyes and James Holmes could build his career around a bad hair day, joyfully constructing his act on the basis that we're all caring, sharing, therapied fluffy bunnies. And who's to say we're not.
Woody Bop Muddy stormed the last section, roaring and smashing his way through the world's most embarrassing record collection. The audience roared back in delight.
STAR RATING (out of five): ***
-- GEORGINA GUSH
A FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE BANANA CABARET, BALHAM, SW12.
THE queue formed at as ever at 7.45 pm with punters jostling to get through the doors first to nab the best seats.
Comedy fans at the front, hen parties and general pissheads at the back, the terminally late hanging off the balcony.
First off the block was affable and sweary Andy Parsons who more than warmed up a benevolent crowd with a set on drugs, chocolate, breakfast cereal (see the connections?) - and cat litter.
But it was try-out Keith Tilbury who won the crowd over with his aggressive lads-turning-into-hens routine. . . and promptly lost his audience with a nasty torrent of abuse about his girlfriend. Ritual slagging off isn't always funny, Keith.
Next act Martin Soan gaves the impression of being a lanky, wide-boy with Hollywood teeth (fine) but I groaned inwardly when he started wheeling out props.
There can be nothing more dismal than a prop act, but Soan transcends the form by having so many, whipping through some surreal combinations and being damn funny.
He closed his set with the funniest and most alarming use of rubber bands I've been privileged to guffaw at.
In the second half, Gina Yashere ripped the roof off with a bawdy, eyeball-rolling performance that left us begging for more.
You might have seen some of the material before in various forms, but she made it her own. Lacked subtlety, thank God.
Finally there was Mark Hurst - skilled enough not to have a gimmick, just up there chatting away with first-rate material, as relaxed as though he's just with a mate in the pub. Belting stuff!
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
-- GEORGINA GUSH
AFFABLE Irishman Kevin Hayes has been appearing in two shows - and excelling in both.
Education met wit in Beyond The Pale (A History of Ireland) in which he achieved one of the toughest tasks a comedian can set himself: teaching an audience history while amusing and entertaining them.
It was a truly outstanding show; one of the most thoroughly-enjoyable hours I've spent in Edinburgh and a joy to attend.
His late-night straight stand-up performance, at the Stand as well, was also excellent. And I'd say not a single punter there would disagree with that assessment.
STAR RATING (out of five): *****
August 1998
IVOR DEMBINA and IAN COGNITO, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
WAS it supposed to be an honour that these big cheeses of the London comedy circuit put on a late free-entry show?
Their contrasting styles - Ivor, disingenously diffident and intellectual; Ian, ranting arsehole - made them an obvious, albeit uncomfortable, pairing.
But what they both forgot on one of the most important nights of the festival was that comedians are meant to be funny.
The midnight performance started very low key: I thought Dembina was going to compere a little and then introduce the so-called 'fierce and funny' Cognito.
But no, he gave us a runaround of British Judaism in the 1990s. Nothing wrong with that. No doubt Dominic Lawson would have enjoyed it immensely. But I suspect the Edinburgh audience had come to laugh.
Dembina also made the mistake of getting into a debate with a drunken critic who wanted to smoke. He ended up accused of fascism by the journalist and slipped from the stage with hardly a word to say in his defence.
It was a piss-poor start to the show, but worse was to come.
Cognito shattered the embarrassed silence with an unfunny rant of a performance worthy of a tube train nutter.
The tedious account of dragging himself up by his bootstraps, marital shipwreck, hollowness of fame (has he ever been famous?), great drugs he's done (where have we heard that before?), was indistinguishable from the blether of a thousand pub bores rolled into one spitting, sweating ball of bitterness.
Successful comics Nick Wilty and Stuart Lee were in the audience and didn't laugh much.
And I'm angry now I gave as much as an old button to the silent collection at the end of the show. There are plenty of street beggars more deserving of the cash than these two smug conmen.
Cognito should go back into the retirement he so richly deserves.
As for sad old Dembina, he's committing comedy suicide on the circuit by nottelling jokes.
Perhaps, old comics never die; they just go a bit senile and become an embarrassment to anyone who knows them.
STAR RATING (out of five): ZERO
-- GEORGINA GUSH / August 1998
LEE MACK, Return of the Mack, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
THE publicity for this show portrayed Mack sending up a rap star: an image followed through by a short film sequence - shown before the performance - of him donning rap gear.
But it all proved a gimmick. When Mack appeared before the tiny audience (about 30 people in a 150-capacity room), he was casually dressed and trotted out his regular routines, almost none of them involving rap.
Nonetheless, he is energetic and his material is strong, although there wasn't enough top-notch stuff to fill an hour-long show.
STAR RATING (for talent and potential): **** (out of five)
/August 1998
BOOTHBY GRAFFOE, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
THE best thing about this show was newish comic Simon Evans as a stooge in the audience. Otherwise, it came down to a couple of songs, unspontaneous rapartee and adolescent sketches.
Graffoe's material was thinly spread and his references to past glowing reviews made one wonder how on earth he has achieved his high profile.
He may be excellent over 30 minutes, but an hour-long show makes him diffuse and ill-tempered. He even resorted to dragging in dope-smoking to win a knowing cheer.
It's time for him to do something new.
STAR RATING (out of five): **
-- GEORGINA GUSH/August 1998
MIKE GUNN, Good Grief, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
GUNN was one of the acts I most wanted to see. . . but turned out the most disappointing.
His material was quite good but his performance was amazingly weak for a comedian of his experience.
Gunn seemed more camp than deadpan - like a comedic Dale Winton clad as a funeral director. And his handling of hecklers was cliched. He wasn't thinking on his feet and, as a result, was half-dying on his arse.
No wonder only 10 punters had come to see him.
STAR RATING (out of five): **
August 1998
RICH HALL, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
WOW! This show proved why the established guys hold their own against the young tyros.
It was slick, topical, political, well paced and well funny.
Some silly but genuinely amusing songs made it a sheer delight - and a good reason why Hall should give masterclasses to young comics.
The secret is in the writing and the realisation that you shouldn't expect to get by on charm alone.
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
-- GEORGINA GUSH/August 1998
THE COMEDY ZONE, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival
THIS was definitely one of the most over-rated shows of the festival. Four newish comics did their best to join the big boys of comedy, but looked hopelessly out of their depth.
Dan Evans seemed uncomfortable as the compere, desperately rattling out his own material rather than concentrating on interaction with the audience.
Anton did his joke (doggy style). It's high time he wrote another gag. His shambling image is effective but you can't help wondering if he's genuinely a bit of a Scouse fuckwit.
Gorden Southern's act wasn't bad. He's an assured performer and has some sharp and funny lines. But he's better seen in a small venue.
And headliner Simon Evans was enjoyable. He trotted out his familiar act with great confidence and precision and was undoubtedly the best of a mediocre bunch.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): **and a bit
SEAN LOCK, 'Hello Mums', Battersea Art Centre (Short BAC and Sides) London SW11
BLOKEY is the obvious adjective for Sean; he's not a style guru, not Oxbridge mafia (in presentation, I don't know his true credentials). Good natured geezerhood rules.
On an unfeasibly sweaty night - so hot that Harry Hill took off his baseball cap, in a blackbox auditorium where the air-conditioning must have been provided by a toxic dragon - we started with a film of various members of the Lock family dancing against a white background. Very art school, not very funny, but setting up for a cracking gag when Sean got on.
He has a good balance of meandering chat and big tags - the 50-minute format allowing him to develop strands of thought rather than demand a big laugh every 10 seconds.
Obviously still a work in progress (which must be a bit scary for him, with Edinburgh just two weeks away), the first half is stronger than the second, which has some good stories that definitely are in search of closure.
Personal favourite was the cat-stretching routine, but some work on the girlfriend routines is in order to make them less ordinary. It's all very well seeming like the funny guy down the pub, but if you're Sean Lock, you have to be bigger and better.
Definitely worth catching if you're up there, or in one of the squillion previews down here.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ***
-- GEORGINA GUSH/July 1998
Lee Canterbury, Natalie Haynes and Addy Borg, COMEDY AT SOHO HO, Crown and Two Chairmen, W1
THESE three comics are not presenting a show together in Edinburgh, although each will be there in a bill show of some description. (Lee Canterbury is in the Daily Telegraph Open Mic finals, Addy is compering one of Screaming Blue Murder's superb Big Value Comedy Shows, and Natalie's in another show).
Last night was a chance for each to bash through up to 20 minutes of material, with no heckling (we'd been told, and amazingly everyone behaved as though at a Sunday tea with a rich aunt - laughing at every joke and glossing over any embarrassing moments).
Even better with no interval and no compere, this was a tight hour of entertainment without any of the stock in trade Q &A with an audience which can drain energy from a gig.
Lee Canterbury, has a former incarnation as a holiday rep, and I can well believe it. So good-natured and smiley and full of bounce you want to hide in the sand dunes. He had the hard job in opening, and his material, recalling '70s animal progs, disco and teen angst was amusing but somehow dated - not so much nostalgia, more a lack of development.
He tore through a short set and lost some material just through garbling.
Natalie Haynes has the making of a good comic, she's got tons of material and doesn't depending on a gurrl-gimmick to get laughs.
She raced along as though complete amnesia were just a heart beat away and if she didn't spit all the material out it would go forever.
As with much relationship humour, which can be so poignant, it sailed perilously close to therapy, covering revenge, betrayal, mercy shags and the anxiety about parents seeing the show.
Natalie is funny, like most women are, talking about personal life, but she just has give it an extra push to be more a performer and less the amusing dinner companion.
Finally to Addy Borg, polishing some old material, still funny on its tenth hearing, spicing it up with new stuff. This man has the ready-brek glow of the confident comic.
Falling on the good-looking side of odd (think Marty Feldman meets Antonio Banderas), he relaxes the audience by enjoying himself, without ever lapsing into smugness.
He's excellent with an audience who are on his side - can't wait to see him in Edinburgh with a bigger and more lippy crowd to put him on his mettle.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ***
-- GEORGINA GUSH/July 1998
ED BYRNE and STUART LEE, The Banana Cabaret, SW12
STUART LEE is so thrilled with having had a long stint on telly that he bases half his act on people he's been told he looks like.
How deeply thrilling for us that he has been likened to pop star Roland Gift and Mark Fowler from EastEnders.
His languor sails perilously close to lazy and I was struggling to work out why he has acquired celebrity status. Having been cursed, by his own admission, with a sarcastic sounding voice, he could at least smile.
He's like a sneery adolescent boy that most mums would dread being brought home by their little girls.
By contrast, Ed Byrne would be the one that they're making sandwiches for and showing the baby pictures to.
Twenty-six going on 18, he's got shy charm worked out to a 'T': he's energetic, chatty, natural seeming.
Even when he's talking about wanking, you get the feeling that mum would be giggling behind her hand rather than disapproving.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ***
-- GEORGINA GUSH
STAND UP TWO, COMEDY CAFE, EC1
RICHARD MORTON hosted this recording for a Radio Two show, warming up the stodgy audience with energy and aplomb.
Gentle Kevin Gildea did some amusing relationship stuff, Trevor Crook entertained with whales and butterflies - and Parsons and Naylor died on their arses, very much to their own surprise.
Song titles as conversation harks back to Punt and Dennis of 12 years ago. Must try harder. Lucrative advertising contracts obviously make you lazy.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): **
-- GEORGINA GUSH
CHARLOTTE PALMER at Buccaneers Comedy, W1
WHAT is wrong with Charlotte Palmer? Blah blah tampons, blah blah vibrators, blah blah genitalia. Then she turns into Mary Poppins, getting out her flute to play Ski Sunday. Get lost, Charlotte!
I'm sure there's a market for people who enjoy your brand of anatomically accurate humour, but they are probably sweating over their GCSEs and not old enough to go into a pub anyway.
And squealing girley-style at the audience that they're all crazy is not going to get up the energy (your avowed intent).
If you're too tired to perform, stand aside for someone who isn't. Mind you, I suspect a long kip wouldn't make an iota of difference to Palmer. She's been trotting this garbage out for more than a year. Remember, Jenny Eclair was doing it four years ago, and it wasn't funny then either. Get an act, Charlotte, or get another career!
But it wasn't all bunk at the Buccaneer. New act Mike Meakin showed strong stage presence which bodes well for when his material comes in.
Kevin Precious has been around for longer and has a relaxed, daffy presentation, and credits his audience with enough intelligence not to have to spell out every punchline.
Noel James, cursed in London what's on guide Time Out a few weeks ago with the tag of "a comedian's comedian", gave the lie to that dreadful description which normally means enormously unfunny.
He is surreal and gets away with punning, throwing away enough good quips for the comedy scavengers to swoop in and knit themselves an extra five minutes. And Noel boasts a likeable, schoolboy charm which tickles away at an audience, almost persuading them to let him off doing his homework. However, he skates through on charisma - and it's no substitute for putting in more work on the writing.
OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ***
-- GEORGINA GUSH
FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY AT JOE'S COMEDY MADHOUSE, LONDON N16
NORTH LONDON'S quirkiest comedy club did not disappoint as it celebrated its first birthday in typically eccentric style.
Talented Rob Rouse opened the show with a rousing half-hour set which was truly at the cutting edge. Few young stand-ups have the energy or pluck that he displays in everything from his highly controversial (often taboo) material to the extraordinary musical finale.
Rouse is one of the few newish acts on the London circuit who really looks like he has stardom written all over him.
Then there was a string of shorter performances: Danny Hurst struggled a little but Mick Twelves fared better with some top gags; musical impressionist Pamela Philips went down well.
Compere Michael Eaves kept the night bubbling along, only losing his temper with the wretched Enis who virtually refused to leave the stage!
As Joe Wilson explained when he handed round undercooked birthday cake he had baked himself, lunacy is every bit as much a part of the Madhouse as comedy - a fact illustrated by the prehistoric Dennis "Two-brushes" Ahearn who came out of retirement for another public grooming of his hair.
But no-one could doubt the comedy talent of the highline act Micky Flanagan who had kicked off the club exactly a year before.
His hilarious repartee with the audience, and particularly one drunken heckler, showed the remarkable degree to which he can think on his feet to superb comedic effect. Flanagan's 35-minute performance was one of the finest and funniest I have seen on any comedy stage.
STAR RATING (out of five): *****
-- PETER GUEST
ROLLY MOE at the Buccaneers Comedy, W1.
THE BUCCANEERS again - one of my fave clubs - where compere Andy Laud could give George Clooney handsome lessons, but can't warm-up a TV dinner - never mind an audience.
And so on to the dishonourable Rolly Moe. This whip thin character is a glutton for punishment.
I saw him buried by a silent walk-out by six people at a club a few weeks ago, and why the Buccaneers' crowd didn't flee to the bar for the Brazil match I do not know.
His ultra-slow, high-pitched delivery and strangled wheezing is reminiscent of Emo Phillips of blessed memory.
But unlike musicians, comedians are not allowed to be a one-man tribute-band.
Moe borrows his vocal style from Emo, and his sartorial presentation is that of the skinny fundamentalist preacher from David Byrne's 'Once in a Lifetime' video.
Why does he imagine it's funny to be as dislocated as a male loony on the bus and offering horribly to flirt with lone women in the audience?
This is like being caught up in the grimmest performance in a seventies cafe-theatre.
Whatever private agenda he is working out, it should not see the light of day.
Avoid at all costs!
STAR RATING (out of five): *
-- GEORGINA GUSH
THE IMPROV, LONDON W1
WHAT a night to be in the audience at this club in Tottenham Court Road! I was one of only 20 seated in London's most comfy barn.
Phil Davey, an acclimatised aussie, managed to talk to everyone in his role as MC - playing with a table of travelling Americans to great success without boring the rest of the audience.
Roly poly Andre Vincent, looking ten years younger than he did three months ago (amazing what a trip to San Francisco can do), raised the energy with a cheeky set about fat lads, obese women, the Titanic, and Louise Woodward as the next James Bond.
How these two guys stayed so good humoured playing to a couple of acres of check table-cloth I don't know, but they didn't moan at the audience like lesser comics might have done. They worked hard and brought us in to them.
Best of all was Trevor Crook. He makes a virtue of inertia and doesn't "do animated".
His ability to captivate an audience with a set on depression, S & M, bad marriages, Socrates and whales was as funny and original as anything you'll see this year.
Never before has calculated lethargy been so endearing.
The antithesis of the brutally-loud, bronzed Australian, he is slight, scruffy and softly spoken (anything else would be too much effort).
And Crook appears like a nocturnal animal blinking in the spotlight, the occasional lifting grin being the give-away that he's rather enjoying himself.
He only had to depart from his ambling, story-of-his-life approach to sort out a bunch of yappy barristers (I think they'd seen This Life once too often and fancied themselves.)
He gave the legal beagles the attention they'd been courting, snuffed them out and proceeded with the only successful unscripted, Q & A session I've ever seen. Ace!
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
-- GEORGINA GUSH
NELSON COMEDY CLUB, South Wimbledon
Ooh, what a chatty lot they are down at the newly stripped and scrubbed Nelson.
It was compered by the splendid Mandy Muden who scored highly on organising the audience, jazzing them up and launching the acts with unforced warmth.
Brian Damage's world-weary songs (or should I say song, since everything comes out to the same plinka-plinka tune) and deliberately lacklustre repartee cut through the table of students obviously used to entertainment with a pause and rewind button.
Danny Buckler impressed the hell out of anyone who was paying attention with a bit of magical escapology before our very eyes and James Holmes could build his career around a bad hair day, joyfully constructing his act on the basis that we're all caring, sharing, therapied fluffy bunnies. And who's to say we're not.
Woody Bop Muddy stormed the last section, roaring and smashing his way through the world's most embarrassing record collection. The audience roared back in delight.
STAR RATING (out of five): ***
-- GEORGINA GUSH
A FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE BANANA CABARET, BALHAM, SW12.
THE queue formed at as ever at 7.45 pm with punters jostling to get through the doors first to nab the best seats.
Comedy fans at the front, hen parties and general pissheads at the back, the terminally late hanging off the balcony.
First off the block was affable and sweary Andy Parsons who more than warmed up a benevolent crowd with a set on drugs, chocolate, breakfast cereal (see the connections?) - and cat litter.
But it was try-out Keith Tilbury who won the crowd over with his aggressive lads-turning-into-hens routine. . . and promptly lost his audience with a nasty torrent of abuse about his girlfriend. Ritual slagging off isn't always funny, Keith.
Next act Martin Soan gaves the impression of being a lanky, wide-boy with Hollywood teeth (fine) but I groaned inwardly when he started wheeling out props.
There can be nothing more dismal than a prop act, but Soan transcends the form by having so many, whipping through some surreal combinations and being damn funny.
He closed his set with the funniest and most alarming use of rubber bands I've been privileged to guffaw at.
In the second half, Gina Yashere ripped the roof off with a bawdy, eyeball-rolling performance that left us begging for more.
You might have seen some of the material before in various forms, but she made it her own. Lacked subtlety, thank God.
Finally there was Mark Hurst - skilled enough not to have a gimmick, just up there chatting away with first-rate material, as relaxed as though he's just with a mate in the pub. Belting stuff!
STAR RATING (out of five): ****
-- GEORGINA GUSH
BIB & BOB, The Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly Circus, London
LET'S make no bones about it. Jerry Sadowitz and Logan Murray's sketch show is one of the most racist, distasteful and obscene productions to ever visit the West End.
Yet I found myself laughing like a drain from start to finish as the anarchic pair assaulted the senses with aspects of stand-ups I despise in others.
The trick they pulled off was to make everything a parody in a fast-moving orgy of futility - an act in which not a jot seemed to matter.
Superman flew again as Christopher Reeve was physically thrown from his wheelchair; an audience member was verbally battered by both performers merely for being bald (eventually he cracked and started to scream back abuse); and Sadowitz delivered an almost-unbelievable racist rant in the guise of an American entertainer.
It was highly disturbed stuff. Sadowitz is a mad, menacing figure on stage. I blinked in disbelief as he spat on a girl in the front row. In a sense, that vulgar act was more unexpected and shocking that the distasteful skits.
How anyone would dare to heckle a monster like Sadowitz is beyond me. One foolhardy drunk who tried incurred the full Sadowitz wrath. The crazed Scot ran to back of the theatre to scream abuse at the cowardly man who had shouted out something from behind a pillar.
The aggression in the room seemed to be contagious. Soon an argument had broken out between another drunk trying to get to the toilet and a middle-class woman whose view had been blocked.
Sadowitz heckled one combatant, Logan picked on the other. You could easily imagine the show ending in a riot.
It reminded me of the last time I saw Sadowitz perform live, at a tiny backstreet theatre in Soho. During the show, an outraged comedienne in the audience punched him - and it definitely wasn't part of the act.
But to be honest, Sadowitz is only picking up where great American comics like Andy Kaufmann and Bill Hicks left off.
Bib and Bob are only so refreshing now because they shamelessly break all taboos - saying the unsayable; doing the undoable in the politically-correct Ben Eltonized late 1990s.
And not all their act was on the edge. The send-up of observational stand-up ("Do you read the Independent? Have you got a cat?") was inspired, as was their attack on West End theatre critics. (I know the late Jack Tinker would have loved their dig at him).
And the Venetian Blinds sketch (in which two blind men from Vienna did a dance routine) was more slapstick than offensive.
Ultimately, the show ended up with a good old-fashioned muck around. Murray was down to his boxer shorts and Sadowitz (always wanting to outdo his less famous colleague) was not wearing a stitch, as they enacted a martial arts film spoof casting out liberal quantites of baked beans and ketchup.
On my way out of the theatre, I popped into the toilet to find oikish young men weeing in the Criterion sinks - and revelling in the sick and racist elements of show.
As ever, the risk with racist and perverted parody is that half your audience will be total asses determined to take it all at face value.
-- John Loblich
LET'S make no bones about it. Jerry Sadowitz and Logan Murray's sketch show is one of the most racist, distasteful and obscene productions to ever visit the West End.
Yet I found myself laughing like a drain from start to finish as the anarchic pair assaulted the senses with aspects of stand-ups I despise in others.
The trick they pulled off was to make everything a parody in a fast-moving orgy of futility - an act in which not a jot seemed to matter.
Superman flew again as Christopher Reeve was physically thrown from his wheelchair; an audience member was verbally battered by both performers merely for being bald (eventually he cracked and started to scream back abuse); and Sadowitz delivered an almost-unbelievable racist rant in the guise of an American entertainer.
It was highly disturbed stuff. Sadowitz is a mad, menacing figure on stage. I blinked in disbelief as he spat on a girl in the front row. In a sense, that vulgar act was more unexpected and shocking that the distasteful skits.
How anyone would dare to heckle a monster like Sadowitz is beyond me. One foolhardy drunk who tried incurred the full Sadowitz wrath. The crazed Scot ran to back of the theatre to scream abuse at the cowardly man who had shouted out something from behind a pillar.
The aggression in the room seemed to be contagious. Soon an argument had broken out between another drunk trying to get to the toilet and a middle-class woman whose view had been blocked.
Sadowitz heckled one combatant, Logan picked on the other. You could easily imagine the show ending in a riot.
It reminded me of the last time I saw Sadowitz perform live, at a tiny backstreet theatre in Soho. During the show, an outraged comedienne in the audience punched him - and it definitely wasn't part of the act.
But to be honest, Sadowitz is only picking up where great American comics like Andy Kaufmann and Bill Hicks left off.
Bib and Bob are only so refreshing now because they shamelessly break all taboos - saying the unsayable; doing the undoable in the politically-correct Ben Eltonized late 1990s.
And not all their act was on the edge. The send-up of observational stand-up ("Do you read the Independent? Have you got a cat?") was inspired, as was their attack on West End theatre critics. (I know the late Jack Tinker would have loved their dig at him).
And the Venetian Blinds sketch (in which two blind men from Vienna did a dance routine) was more slapstick than offensive.
Ultimately, the show ended up with a good old-fashioned muck around. Murray was down to his boxer shorts and Sadowitz (always wanting to outdo his less famous colleague) was not wearing a stitch, as they enacted a martial arts film spoof casting out liberal quantites of baked beans and ketchup.
On my way out of the theatre, I popped into the toilet to find oikish young men weeing in the Criterion sinks - and revelling in the sick and racist elements of show.
As ever, the risk with racist and perverted parody is that half your audience will be total asses determined to take it all at face value.
-- John Loblich
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