Dave Thornton gets incrementally better each year, and while Tall And Pointy is not going to be winning awards for breaking new ground, it’s a slick, funny account of life as a post-millennial, vaguely metrosexual man.
At its core, this is an hour about – wait for it – the differences between men and women, inspired in part by his job co-hosting a female-skewed radio show that opened his eyes wide to a psyche (and some vivid medical images) of which he’d previously been in blissful ignorance. Going to a Chippendales show also shattered some illusions.
All this sets him off about gender roles, asking the room what’s chivalrous and what’s sleazy, prompting quite some animated debate in the stalls. He’s adept at weaving in light-touch crowd work with his prepared material, culminating in a memorable audience-participation climax, all of which creates an appealing looseness and sense of being in a unique moment.
Alongside the men/women routines, he also explores his own masculinity and responsibility, feeling like so many other comics around his age – 33 – that he’s somehow not a real man.
Not that he’s particularly a shirking violet – there are examples of his life as a randy lothario that provide plenty of cheeky, dirty laughs – but despite his social ease he thinks there are some rites of passage he’s missed. Fist fights, for example, or owning a property. The later he has finally done, although buying his first house proves a stress-inducing step on the ladder of adulthood, with auction describe with elegant wit.
There are some good jokes and turns-of-phrase here, if sometimes to a formula. But generally Tall And Pointy is more about spreading a good feeling and generating laughs of recognition rather than pin-sharp writing. His style is mildly self-deprecating – though he has the sort of blokish confidence that’s essentially unshakeable, and the crises of confidence are only ever superficial.
Yet the show bundles along and a cracking pace, driven by an effusive, effortless banter that delivers the chuckles lightly but effectively. It makes Thornton a sure bet for entertaining, broad-based stand-up fitting a familiar template of what mid-30s white male comedians should be talking about. Not exciting, but devastatingly effective.
