Review of the final by Tim Harding

The Musical Comedy Awards feels like a pretty grand occasion, in a good way. Taking place on the huge stage of the Bloomsbury Theatre, it certainly boasts the largest audience that most of the young competitors have played to. 

But as an event it’s not without its issues. Many of the finalists at Saturday night’s show had jokes that were lost to a slightly muddy sound system, and unfortunately, regular host Nick Horseman had a bit of a rough gig. No easy task to compere 12 acts while tech is hurriedly set up and instruments are switched out behind you, but his running bit about introducing the acts with AI was frankly disastrous, and caused some open revolt among the audience and even some of the finalists. He ended up crashing the room’s energy when he came on stage.

One of many to suffer from the tech set-up was previously crowned best newcomer and evening-opener Roops, who came on looking like Whispering Bob Harris and spat some knotty bars about foraging for mushrooms, in an entertaining comic juxtaposition that was let down by music played much too quietly.

The first finalist, Al Nash, will be a familiar face from his online content. Dressed like Angelos Epithemiou and playing the part of a down-at-heel Michael Buble tribute act, he had a decent song about falling in love with a swan at the park, but his backing music was again too quiet. 

Like many of the other acts, he’s not strictly a musical comedian, but has cobbled together enough musical bits to qualify for the final. The Musical Comedy Awards usually have a handful of acts like this, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but the judges are often more likely to go with the musical comedy lifers.

Scottish comedian Zara Gladman was in a similar boat as a primarily online, non-musical comedian, but played her own guitar and had brought a drummer with her. She managed to incorporate her online life as well, with a very clever deep dive into the accounts of various people who had trolled her online, although the jokes weren’t quite punching through. Her song about her existential fear of death was in need of a specific lens or scenario to illustrate her point.

That lens was provided by keyboardist Abi Sharp, whose song Crying On The Northern Line listed a whirlwind of Tube-based psychological crises in a jaunty singalong. She’s a very well-spoken performer who contrasts her presentation with a propensity for earthy material about dick pics and suffocating people with her breasts. Her parents, seated directly in front of me, didn’t seem to mind. Sharp was the first real hit of the night but sadly missed out on the podium.

Also a decisive hit, Paras Patel, who doesn’t really have songs, but picks at a guitar while speaking in the same way that Dylan Moran likes to play the keyboard. 

He brought a welcome edge with his persona that was at once laid back but combative, speaking quietly to pull the audience in and knocking them down with expert comedic jabs. He came in joint third place, which underrated his achievement and his impact on the audience. People afterwards were queuing up to tell him he’d been robbed.

Eoghan Collins, another guitarist, had more of a busking energy, with snippets of brief, crowd-pleasing material pitched to the back of the room. He acquitted himself with a handful of good lines that lacked a unifying perspective. He left the stage without having transmitted a strong idea of his identity as a comedian, but his best bits all had a certain darkness in common. If he focused on baring his fangs a little more, he could be a distinctive act.

Closing out the first half, Jack McMinn was a young keyboardist opening with a vaudeville number about the drawbacks of musical comedy. This is a well-trodden theme for self-loathing musical comedians everywhere, but went down reasonably well, as did his observational songs about Pret, and one about Tupperware sung in the style of Elvis. 

To my mind, he illustrated a recurring propensity among finalists to treat the crowd as more genteel than it actually is. Not many of these acts are particularly gritty or modern, but the ones that are tend to do well with the audience. The judges on the other hand were charmed, and awarded him second place.

Kicking off the second half, double act Shots At The Dragon were a welcome blast of energy. The sound system was once again slightly too quiet, but their fast-paced electropop and high joke rate gave them a very different feel from the vaudeville stylings of the other finalists. 

Their sketch ideas were pleasingly silly as well. One featured Andrew Tate trying to sing a song about manliness in his squeaky, high-pitched voice while his bandmate relentlessly tried to kiss him. And the duo’s opening number about sending disadvantaged minorities to work in the mines was a hit as well. 

The incorporation of so many different styles and instruments (keyboards, guitars, recorders, ukeleles) was enough to identify them as real musical comedians. They took home both the gold and the audience award and feel like they have the right stuff to tread in Aunty Donna’s footsteps.

Next, Holly Spillar was certainly the most experimental act of this conservative lineup, using a loop pedal and her fine voice to create a sonic fog while prowling the stage. A cappella material is always a tough sell at this gig where a lot of performers are playing their instruments live, but I appreciated her striking, individual approach. It was nice to see an act who wouldn’t slot in too neatly to a old-fashioned Radio 4 revue show.

Jonathan Oldfield had turned up as the latest escapee from his seemingly infinite well of charmingly oddball characters, and a completely different one from the beret-wearing crooner with acid reflux who won him silver in the 2024 Sketch Off. 

This latest creation is a Buddy Holly-style pop singer with a fixation on brutalist architecture, and comes replete with an entirely new set of mannerisms. There’s a sense sometimes that Oldfield generates his many characters by picking keywords out of a hat, but they’re always funny and always have a distinct life of their own. The brutalism theme came off as a little cerebral in the context of the other finalists, but that’s not a bad problem to have.

Australian keyboardist Sarah Gaul was next, giving big musical theatre vibes for her selection of songs that touched mostly on careworn comedic tropes, especially her centrepiece about being a fan of true crime. Musically and thematically she played it frustratingly safe, but she had a strong voice and a lot of pep – enough to net her a surprise joint third place with Paras Patel.

Joe Da Costa was another handsome strummer, and like Eoghan Collins proved hard to get a bead on, oscillating between wide-eyed wonder and something more cynical. He was the only act to use the auditorium and the audience in a fun way, repeating his catchphrase ‘it’s just a song guys, it’s nothing to be scared of!’ before running into the crowd to sing his song about kicking the audience in the legs. There’s some good stuff there, and it won’t be long before his comic persona solidifies into something workable.

Finally for the finalists, Alex Prescot was another posh keyboardist, but at least had a very distinctive talent in being able to improvise complex songs and rhyme schemes about everything that had happened so far in the show. Although it never quite yielded comic gold, it’s truly an impressive skill, and he won points in my book for putting the boot into Nick Horseman’s use of AI, which by that point in the evening had become a serious downer. A solid performer and undeniably musically talented, if he incorporated some more pre-written material into his set, he might get a more reliable laugh rate.

Capping off an uneven evening, headliner Jazz Emu was parachuted on stage without any working tech, and had to vamp in character while rebooting his computer, which is not really his comfort zone. 

His ability to kick out catchy comedy funk songs is unparalleled, and he’s the only comedy musician who I sometimes listen to for the music, but his tendency to under-enunciate his lyrics didn’t interact too well with the venue’s sound system, and he ended up suffering the most from some of his material being inaudible.

The WeGotTickets Musical Comedy Awards are a great institution and a valuable competition which would benefit from a refreshment in its approach to staging. Its 2025 line-up had its ups and downs, but there’s still gold in them hills.

Review date: 15 Apr 2025
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Bloomsbury Theatre