Roar with Laughter last night was outstanding. Ed and David, our hosts, seemed a little disappointed by the turn out, I'm afraid. But from a punter's point of view, there were more than enough people there to give the place some atmosphere, and the comics were great.
I didn't have high hopes for Brian Damage & Krysstal, to be honest. I don't do comedy songs, and the pair of them didn't look too promising, either. But they turned out to be very funny, in a rather unchallenging sort of a way. One of my favorite lines of the night came from Brian: "I'm single at the moment - by choice. Not by my choice...".
Dan Willis; what can I say? A programmer in the stand-up business! He's my hero. His story about daydreaming about saving a plane from disaster using his IT skills struck a cord. "Just turn it off, then on again." Brilliant.
Finishing act Kevin Day was the consummate professional. You can see why Ed and Anthony wanted a safe pair of hands to finish on - someone to pick up the pieces after the disaster that could have been...
Paul Foot's act shouldn't have worked, it really shouldn't. But it did. He was the high point of the evening for me.
It seemed like he was deconstructing the process of stand up as much as he was actually doing it. He would tell a (usually not very funny) joke, then explain it. "That was a double entendre - I was referring to his penis, of course." Sometimes the explanation came before the joke - something like "OK, now I'm going to move into the rant part of the act. This is where I rail on about some trivial matter for a few minutes. Of course, I don't really care about it - it's all made up. Telling you that has probably spoiled it for you, hasn't it?" Then he talked about how Chinese food has become more expensive recently. "Boiled rice used to be around £1.90. Now it's more like £2.10!"
See what I mean? It really shouldn't have worked. But somehow, it was all hysterically funny. A man who can have an audience in stitches for ten minutes just by talking about how unseasonably mild the weather had been recently has to be some kind of comedy genius.
The front row certainly earned their chocolate. Or at least one of them did. Paul spend ten minutes sat on the lap of a large rugger-bugger type. I've never seen anyone so uncomfortable in my life. I was worried that Paul might not make it out alive.
A memorable night.
Posted to Funny by Simon Brunning at April 29, 2005 05:29 PM