Review by Steve Bennett

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.

Review date: 13 Sep 2009
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: 100 Club