Review of the political comedian's tour show in London

You won’t be surprised to hear that Andy Zaltzman talks about cricket in his latest show. When an audience member is provoked to suggest his beloved sport might be a teensy bit boring, the Test Match Special statistician launches into a passionate and detailed argument as to why its glacial pace is crucial to its appeal. To him, the subtle ebbs and flows that can only be observed over hours and days are where the joy resides.

He brings a similar mindset to his comedy. While he sometimes wallops a brilliant boundary with a perfectly aimed phrase, he’s also happy to knock singles with little urgency to get to the punchline. He enjoys talking around the issues, taking his sweet time to build up the absurdities, explaining them with a protracted metaphor, long flight of whimsy or wilfully obscure reference. Surely no other stand-up show evokes both ancient Athenian law-maker Cleisthenes and long-retired Australian tennis ace Ken Rosewall within the space of a couple of minutes.

For a topical comedian, he’s surprisingly untroubled by the immediate. A headline will give him a starting point, maybe even a gag or three, but it tends to set up a considered state-of-the-planet analysis, full of quirky and esoteric phrases, yet as forensic as any bowling averages.

That comes, perhaps, from his understandable distrust of the artificial binaries so corrupting political discourse. Or from the obvious truth that the topics he wants to address – the Middle East, climate change, divisive nationalism and British exceptionalism – are not easily dismissed with a glib one-liner.

It’s tough being a political comedian when even your fans hate the news, as he wittily points out, asking the audience to keep their wails of despair to a minimum. In similar vein, the Zaltgeist is vaguely bookmarked by him considering what he should teach his teenage sons about the state of the world amid a tsunami of misinformation and toxic distractions online.

He promises to offer something for all four quadrants of his fanbase: social whimsy from The Bugle podcast; headline-led comedy from The News Quiz which he has so successfully remoulded in his own voice; cricket asides for the TMS crew; and ridiculous props from those who saw him triumph in the latest series of Taskmaster. And he’s true to his promises, the latter taking the form of an AI-powered penguin of prophecy, answering dilemmas the audience put to it pre-interval. Only a cynic would suggest that Zatzman uses the break to program in the solutions…

Equally surreal are the Day Today-style headlines he spouts, while a more-or-less standalone skit offers a brilliant interpretation of what Prince Harry’s Spare memoirs really meant, which manages to be both ridiculous and revealing of the troubled royal’s personality.

But you also have to indulge his genial longwindedness, as Zaltzman is too set in his ways to take any ‘less is more’ advice. For example, when he locates a teacher in the audience and demolishes his subject as an irrelevance that should be struck from the curriculum, it feels like a strong bit of opinionated improvisation. But by the time he exhausts every possible subject, not just one to two, we can no longer suspend disbelief that every option wasn’t scripted. 

But elsewhere the meandering successfully becomes the joke, such as a snooker analogy so long you’d be forgiven for forgetting what he was analogising by the time he reaches the end. As with so many of Zaltzman’s routines, the circuitous journey is more crucial than the destination.

» The Zaltgeist is on tour until May. Andy ​Zaltzman tour dates

Review date: 28 Nov 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Leicester Square Theatre