Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

Frenchy gets his sold-out show under way by asking who’s seen his work on YouTube. Only two people haven’t – and I’m one of them. When he later explains that one sketch depicts him going down on a girl during her period and emerging with a bloodied face, I’m pretty glad of the fact.

Yet he is one of the very few people to be earning a living from his online comedy videos – an income he is starting to supplement with stand-up such as this.

The new career is certainly a step up from his former job. He spent four years cleaning toilets in a nightclub, so has all the spew, shit, piss and used tampon stories you could possibly want – if indeed you want any.

His young audience certainly do, and he’s sating them with a steady diet of what teenagers finds funny: throwaway references to oral sex, premature ejaculations, incest and cunnilingus. Those nightclub stories, erm, climax, with him miming a barmaid pleasuring a beer-pump.

Needless to say, it’s not sophisticated stuff. Simply mentioning things his crowd are familiar with works. He gets a laugh just asking a girl: ‘Are you on Tinder?’. Asking another, ‘Do you do anal?’ causes the room to lose its collective shit… figuratively speaking.

There are lots of easy targets, including himself. I counted at least nine variations on who or what he looks like within a couple of minutes at the start. His ex-girlfriend is dismissed as crazy – and if you think that’s sexist wait till he starts talking about ‘harpooning whales’ a charming euphemism for trying to pick up fat chicks.

Yet it’s not quite as terrible as this list some of the less salubrious jokes makes it sound. He’s ‘route one’ for sure; but he’s got an cheeky charm and works well off the audience’s energy, sustaining a ‘fun-night-out’ atmosphere.

And when he moves off sex and bodily functions, which admittedly isn’t all that often, he has a few affable tales. As most of his audience knows, he also spent four years as a high school teacher – even if he wasn’t the paragon of propriety the role normally requires – and this provides more interesting fare. Equally the relationship section feels more than a catalogue of cheap and easy jokes.

But it’s not long before Frenchy – the usual Aussie abbreviation for his real name, Ben French, rather than any Gallic-inspired nickname – reverts to type. When he’s joined by a guitarist Zak, he’s persuaded to use a dildo as a plectrum. Stay classy!

After a couple of songs about a ‘Runty Seagull’ and about being trapped in the ‘friend zone’ with girls he’d like to root, Frenchy disappeared into the wings to emerge as a be-mulletted bogan, just to add a final easy joke to a show full of them.

Review date: 19 Apr 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett