by Steve Bennett

Other than asides about how middle-class the whole affair is, few comedy performers write specific material for Latitude. But industrious Pappy’s, closing the Literature Arena with a post-midnight hour, themed their whole show around the festival – despite the workload of having just finished making their new BBC Three sitcom, Badults.

The trio suggested that after a few years of performing here, they have lost their love of the event, and over the course of the show would be visited by the ghosts of Latitude past, present and yet-to-come – aka Florence And The Machine, Kraftwerk and Daft Punk – to revive that passion.

Needless to say, Rory Bremner won’t be losing any sleep over the accuracy of these ‘impersonations’. Florence is Ben Clark precariously balanced on Tom Parry’s shoulders and draped in a frock, Kraftwerk are komedy Krauts insisting in mechanical monotone ‘we’re a lot of fun’; while Daft Punk, their crash helmets crudely constructed from tinfoil, are very insistent that you ‘disco your bacon’. Matthew Crosby is the alleged straight-man arguing with these bizarre creations, but he’s only marginally less of an idiot than his colleagues.

The enthusiastic trio are clearly having such brilliant fun playing around with these preposterously silly ideas, providing a lively Knockabout energy that makes them so appealing. There are jokes about dropped accents, dodgy costumes and bungled scene changes at each others’ expense, as all three deviate freely from the loose script. And if those ad libs can take a pot-shot at Bloc Party, who Pappy’s deem unworthy of the Friday-night headline slot, so much the better, as they perpetuate yet another running joke specific to this festival.

This boisterously playful nonsense is interspersed with some greatest hits of the past couple of years: strong sketches made stronger by their devil-may-care attitude. So much of stand-up is creating the illusion of spontaneity, yet few sketch groups try... and with Pappy’s it’s not merely an illusion: much of this absolutely could not be used anywhere else. Lucky us!

Review date: 22 Jul 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Latitude