Gig review by Steve Bennett

Seann Walsh, the king of exasperated observation comedy, isn’t sure the middle-class Latitude crowd are his kind of people. ‘Get me to the Reading Festival now!’ he jokes after they take issue with his disdain for sweet potato wedge.

But he has little time for such pretensions, as he sees them. He’s a no-nonsense man who likes his water flat, his tea unherbalised and his cigarette a Rizla full of tobacco, not an electronic gizmo full of some fruity vape liquid. Special contempt is reserved for fashionable chichi foods - like vegetables – which he considers part of a trend for denying yourself the pleasures of unhealthy food.

Often he’ll get a laugh from simply mentioning something like a spiraliser in a contemptuous tone and adding ‘fuck off!’ rejoinder. (There are a lot of f- and c-bombs for 1pm). However, such dismissive incredulity is only ever a starting point for more creative material. The scenes he imagines now bread is no longer a ‘permissible’ foodstuff are particularly amusing.

Walsh is not the first comedian to long for a simpler time. He came from a poor family but now finds himself living in a gentrified areas. Maybe some of his sneers come from self-hate, as he comes to terms with becoming the adult he never thought he would be.

Nostalgic comedy isn't what it used to be, though, and at a still relatively youthful 31, Walsh’s reminiscences are located in a very particular time. Many stand-ups might talk about cassette tapes, he asks his audience to remember illegal downloading.

Likewise, the rigmarole of getting photos developed or going to the video store are well-trodden tropes; but again, it’s where he takes this that proves so funny, enlivened by an animated but controlled delivery. Channelling Monty Python’s Mr Creosote when discussing the dessert menu at restaurants is an especially fine bit of acting-out.

Walsh’s changing circumstances may see him trying to look after myself a bit, but that only brings him into contact with more ‘dickheads’ to fuel his comic dismay, and producing a surefire set that is so much better than his most hated grown-up word: nice.

Review date: 14 Jul 2017
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