Gig review by Steve Bennett

When Andy Parsons quit Mock The Week a couple of years back, it was to focus on his political panel show podcast, Slacktivist Action Group, and to ‘delve a little deeper into the bigger issues affecting the UK’.

The result is that his half-hour set at the Latitude festival was as much stand-up opinion as stand-up comedy, as he shared the benefit of his wisdom on such topics as NHS privatisation, HS2 and Theresa May’s plans for more grammar schools.

It started particularly slowly, with quite a convoluted routine about the delays and bungled appointments he’s experienced as he tried to get a dodgy shoulder treated – though it would eventually pay off when he returned to it later for its payoff.

That was symptomatic of a performance which started heavy on comment and lighter on jokes but found its comic mojo towards the middle; turning on a routine about women in burkas on a water slide that celebrated an image that struck him as delightfully silly.

Turning his attention to claims the Prime Minister couldn’t negotiate her way out of a paper bag prompted a sharp, point-scoring analogy, while he managed to find two separate, and very funny, metaphors for Brexit and for the Tory leadership race that involved penises.

His distinctive nasal, South Coast delivery is also a mixed blessing, yeah?, giving him a definite rhythm that can, yeah?, build towards a punchline, yeah? Though he has another verbal tic, yeah?, that’s a bit annoying. I’ll leave you to figure out what that might be, yeah?

Review date: 16 Jul 2017
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett