Live review

Quite some line-up at London’s 100 Club – infamously one of the Sex Pistols’ old haunts – including this year’s main Edinburgh Comedy Award winner, last year’s best newcomer, and the previous year’s Panel prize winner. Not to mention the winner of the Daily Telegraph Worst Comedy Experience 2005…

But first up, after some perfunctory compering from Dan Clark to a slightly sluggish sold-out crowd (although both he and they get better as the night progresses), comes an act who professes not to be a comedian at all.

Angelos Epithemiou, the new regular on Shooting Stars, is the owner of a burger van, and ambles on stage in his anorak, greased-down hair and tracksuit pants and carrying a cheap plastic carrier bag, before studiously measuring out the microphone cable, to delay the point at which he actually has to say anything.

Comedy can be about messing with the audience’s expectations. And Epithemiou – the creation of Dutch Elm Conservatoire comedian Renton Skinner – is one of the new breed of ‘anti-comedians’ who does this by refusing to do almost anything that might be construed as a joke. Instead, he affects a nervous delivery of the sort you can see at open mic nights up and down the country, and delivers weak observations about ‘Gordon Browns’ being ‘a disabled’, acts out obscure ‘impressions’ or bluntly attempts audience banter.

A lot of this falls flat, as indeed it’s supposed to, although the distinction between this sort of ironic, deliberate ineptitude and something that’s just rubbish is a fine one. The audeince only know Skinner’s pretending because that’s what they’re primed for in a big gig such as this, and because he occasionally hits the off-beat laugh perfectly, interrupting one of his own set-ups with precision timing.

But more often than not, it is just awkward, especially in his extended finale in which he mimes to an ancient Mud track, which is initially hilarious but soon saps the patience. Tellingly, one of the biggest laughs comes when he does a pub-style gag that he professes not to understand, but it works better than most of the deliberately stilted material.

By strange quirk of fate, Epithemiou isn’t the only roadside-café-owner-cum-semi-reluctant-entertainer to have emerged in recent months, but his TV appearances are likely to put paid to any ambitions of the superficially similar Brian Gittins. Bbut as a live act sustaining 20 minutes, Epithemiou needs more giggles. Perhaps Shooting Stars creator Bob Mortimer, in the audience tonight, could give him a few pointers.

After the first interval, the winner of that mean-spirited Daily Telegraph accolade takes to the stage. Richard Herring hits the crowd with his robust, and well-practiced, club set, with a couple of stupidly ironic lines from his latest Hilter Moustache show. His cheeky material about the schoolyard gestures for gay and straight sex plays nicely to his juvenile, arrested-development persona, as well as being joyfully ridiculous.

He, too, likes to push the tolerance of his audience, and as he wonders, at length whether there really is such a thing as a Mars Bar, he’s greeted with a mixture of amusement and irritation. ‘Move on,’ one heckler suggests – but that only encourages him. In fact, the interruption reinvigorates the segment, allowing Herring to deconstruct the deconstruction. ‘Of course I know what a Mars bar is,’ Herring says – explaining the joke in depth before plunging back into it. Yes, its indulgent, but the fact he’s having such fun with it is what makes it such a tease.

Fresh from being crowned King of Edinburgh, Tim Key is in as fine spirits as his marginally aloof persona allows. He’s performing tonight as Freeze, a double-act with Tom Basden, who stands forlornly on stage holding Key’s pint as he sets up the stage just-so.

There’s a delightful awkwardness about their interaction, and indeed their whole act that unbalances the audience. Combining precision with vagueness, the ambiguity of whether we are seeing a shambolic poet and his hapless sidekick or two charming performers underplaying their offbeat wit creates an expectant atmosphere.

Into this, Key lobs his short, strange poems, some from his award-winning Slutcracker show, while Basden interjects and occasionally plays guitar – if Key allows. The third member of this double act is the atmospheric backing track, faded in and out almost at random as Key bluntly issues commands to the sound desk. It fits in nicely with his character, who has pretensions of intellectual snobbery, but turns out rather prosaic verse –  complemented perfectly by Basden’s meek low-status demeanour.

Their lines are delivered with perfectly inappropriate timing, and their bright punchlines rarely anticipated, which makes them a class act.

In absolute contrast to their vaguely disconcerting style, headliner Mark Watson’s appeal is that he’s just such a natural. He comes on, blethering away enthusiastically nineteen to the dozen and sweeping you up in the pace of the conversation. That he’s just an ordinary bloke chatting away is reinforced by his habit of commentating on what’s going on: telling the audience he knows they haven’t the measure of him yet, but reassuring them that he does this comedy thing quite often, and it normally goes all right.

That’s pretty much his angle: that the world is basically fine – lying somewhere between the marketing hyperbole that raises expectations unnecessarily and his instinctive propensity to frets about everything, especially his impending fatherhood at the age of 29. Day-to-day encounters flesh out the bones, whether it be awkward conversations with cab drivers or fleeting eye contact with a stranger on a train.

It’s all very relatable, slightly exaggerated by Watson’s self-proclaimed status as something of a loose cannon – even though his appeal is that he’s just like the rest of us, with reactions just slightly amplified and a more fluid and eloquent way of expressing them than most of us can muster. He effuses passionately about the smallest of things, but you can always identify exactly where he is coming from, which is what makes his patter so universally appealing. A strong end to a strong night.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

Published: 11 Sep 2009