It’s been a long time since Michael McIntyre perfected his lucrative brand of exaggerated observational comedy. A pre-show video highlights reel tells us it’s been 15 years since that defining ‘man drawer’ routine – as well as highlighting just how little his dependable mainstream shtick has changed over the years. Only a 1999 clip from the Comedy Store, showing him in jeans and T-shirt that really don’t suit him, deviate from the winning formula.
Given that his audience always knows exactly what they will get, Macnificent safely offers more of the same, sometimes to the point of seeming like a self-parody. ‘Eyebrows, what’s all that about then?’ starts one routine.
Meanwhile, the segment about watching his son’s football match draws from exactly the same speech impediment well as his marvellous routine about having an anaesthetised mouth, post-dentist, from 2012’s Showtime. But with added, unsubtle, innuendo.
Relatability is McIntyre’s watchword, of course, and he remains the middle-class Everyman – even with far-from universal experiences such as fretting about whether he might not sell out all the 10,000-seat arenas on this tour, breakfasting at the same LA hotel as supermodels, and employing a devious gardener. But the obvious trappings of his success are tempered by more understandable insecurities about maintaining his dignity when the world – and his own stupidity – conspires against that.
And those stories are outliers. Mostly, his material is built on common ground, from gurgling stomachs to the too-easy tendency to reach for a bottle of wine at home to how yawns are infectious. Although not in his show, as he injects energy into the most trite observation.
All is sold with the big, expressive gestures and the trademark purposeful striding. While sometimes this feels too practised, his physical comedy prowess is proved in a routine in which he lies on the floor recreating his ill-fated amorous advances towards his wife on his expensive yet impractical mattress, half of which is is firm, and half of which is soft.
Act-outs elevate even more mundane routines such as talking ‘about the breads of the world’ – a trite and rather obviously engineered conceit to get him to mimic Mexicans with their tortillas, Frenchmen with their baguettes, and Indians with their naan. No prizes for guessing which accent he doesn’t do.
Also in his favour are the florid descriptions with which he elevates the everyday, for example the term ‘piss-pot’ as a charming variation on ‘pisshead’.
While not being too troubled by having any grand vision, McIntyre does have a couple of underlying themes.
Technology is the less interesting one, as he talks about TikTok algorithms serving up a surfeit of boobs, addictive phone use and step-counting apps. Though his urgent stage pacing surely helps him hit the target every day on tour, this segment ends in a nicely non-PC line about the wearable tech.
He’s also updated the old musical hall gag about a speak-your-weight machine telling an overweight customer ‘one at a time, please’ for 21st Century technology in a self-deprecating bridge to talking about him trying to lose weight.
The other recurring strand is about British reserve, our unadventurous streak – our bread is the boring loaf – and our dislike of confrontation. A cynic might suggest McIntryre is the sliced white Mother’s Pride of comedy, but that would be harsh: the craftsmanship that goes into his work at least elevates him to a supermarket sourdough.
While nothing here will redefine anyone’s worldview, the material is timeless – as indeed is he, looking at least a full decade younger than his 47 years.
One exception is the routine about Covid, something audiences might already be tired of. But as McIntyre points out, given his career is built on talking about shared experiences – and since lockdown happened in the five years since his last tour – it seems germane to speak of it.
Indeed, he does highlight the ridiculous rigamarole of trying to dine out in the earliest days of restrictions being eased in a way that is cliche-free, very funny and strangely nostalgic.
This segment – indeed the whole show – concludes in a delightfully farcical anecdote about the time he caught Covid on his wife’s birthday, culminating in a hilariously humiliating image, brilliantly deflating the smugness of his stage demeanour.
It’s a routine that’s almost worth the ticket price alone, even as some of the other segments feel like going through the motions – albeit with skill and craftsmanship.
