Hal Cruttenden’s trying to play against his reputation for being a bit safe – a ‘pound shop Michael McIntyre’ as he puts it. ‘I’m surprisingly unpleasant,’ he tells the audience, insisting that he gets away with any awful behaviour by being posh and charismatic. Like Boris Johnson, for instance.
However, Cruttenden differs from our erstwhile Prime Minister by being a) provably good at his job, b) essentially honest, and c) a bit of a leftie Remainer. Though he’s careful to ration the politics, aware not everyone in his middle-class audience might echo his views.
While he can touch on dark material, he probably overplays his edginess. He’s teasing rather than vicious, always jocular and apologetic after saying anything vaguely irritable or that could possibly cause offence. Yet in this tour, he has a profoundly personal seismic shift to discuss and doesn’t shy away from its aftermath.
As he warms up, he spends a little too long talking about this tour’s title and what the secret he wants to share might be, raising the possibility that it might be that he’s dying or – the long-time staple of his campish stand-up – finally coming out as gay. However, as anyone who has read the show’s blurb will already be aware, in September last year, his wife ‘kindly’ gave him the topic to support the existing title – by splitting from him.
Although Cruttenden enters the stage to the strains of Two Tribes, the end of his more than 20-year marriage is not really a war, but ‘kind of amicable’. He and his wife – an artist and children’s author – have even continued to live in the same house, which comes with its own problems.
The comic is accepting rather than bitter about the separation, and there’s no vitriol heaped on his soon-to-be-ex wife. Instead, he jokes about how he’d put on so much weight it was hard to remove his wedding ring, his shifting relationship with his adult daughters and how he’s had to reintroduce himself to the world of dating – now dominated by apps and dick pics – after a long hiatus. There’s surely more he could say on this topic, but maybe that’s for the next tour.
Thanks to the hard lessons of first-hand experience, 53-year-old Cruttenden is especially astute on how much sadness and stigma surrounds the image of the divorced, single, middle-aged man. How different from the idea of the carefree female divorcée embarking on new sexual adventures.
Whatever his protestations about being an awful person, Cruttenden’s a cheery, waggish presence on stage – and is particularly good at bouncing off the audience, mocking their marital problems, either real or confected. Everyone willingly – sometimes even enthusiastically - plays along.
There are a few less personal asides, such as how owning a dog softens your image, even if you are Hitler, and a couple of running jokes that he possibly milks too much. But this is surely his most candid tour yet, ranging from the effects of Covid on his career and sense of purpose to gaining a therapist to deal with the divorce.
However, with the well-honed comic instinct to mine laughs from dismay, and a sharp sense of both timing and jovial self-deprecation, jokes always come first in this accomplished break-up show.
• Hal Cruttenden: It’s Best You Hear It From Me is on tour through to June 2023. Hal Cruttenden tour dates.
