DVD review by Steve Bennett

Unfairly derided by comedy’s self-appointed cool kids, Michael McIntyre has proved he can do the business, both metaphorically and literally.

You don’t get as rich as him without being firmly in the mainstream, but plenty of his routines turn the everyday into the deliciously hilarious. Why Jerry Seinfeld gets kudos for doing this while McIntyre is looked down on probably says a lot about British attitude to success. Although to be fair, Seinfeld never wound up as a judge on America’s Got Talent...

Sure, some of the material in Showtime – a tautly-edited DVD of his latest monster tour – is a little pedestrian, but there are some outstanding routines here, too, that sit among the best you’ll hear.

On the downside, his opening topical-ish routine about the Olympics and the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations contains the sort of jokes you’ll hear comics doing everywhere; and ultimately comes down to a gentle ribbing of the Royals that depends on how funny you find the image of Her Maj hula-hooping like Grace Jones. Later, a section about how cheeky games with his kids could be misinterpreted plays out rather predictably.

Yet he finds fertile new ground in the well-ploughed field of domesticity; with arguments over household chores or the physical re-enactment of his wife putting tights on getting well-deserved guffaws of recognition. Similarly a rant about the palaver of ordering online became a rallying cry of middle-aged frustrations – a fine illustration of how the best observational comedy tells us things we knew, but didn’t know we knew.

But for all his strengths in that field, it’s a more personal first-hand anecdote that’s the best on this DVD. It concerns a ill-fated trip to the dentist, made worse by the anaesthetic that renders his speech only semi-intelligible. The way he tries to explain his predicament in near-gibberish is uproarious, with McIntyre demonstrating the sort of timing that’s got him to the top, married with this peculiar language. He also employs repetition to powerful effect both here, and in another silly routine about names with non-phonetic spellings.

His fans will understandably love this disc, as the waves of laughs that swell around the massive O2 attest – and his material works on screen as well, if not better, than it does live, given the lack of intimacy in the venues he plays. But McIntyre-sceptics might also find plenty to enjoy, and not just from seeing a master technician at work.

Published: 15 Nov 2012