Skip to main content

It's Kevin (Again)

Tonight's Mostly Comedy was a lovely way to usher in our Autumn season, but of course it would be, when you have Kevin Eldon on the bill. 

Kevin Eldon at tonight's Hitchin Mostly Comedy (22.09.16)  Photo by Gemma Poole. 

I can't understate how much I rate him as a performer; something I know Glyn would definitely agree. I still remember how excited we both were the first time he said yes to playing our club. I said in his introduction tonight how just about every time a one-off character in a sitcom or sketch show sticks in your mind, it's almost certainly played by him; he was the laughing guy in the lift in I'm Alan Partridge, for Chrissakes. Not only that, but his performance as Bill Kerr in the excellent Radio 4 series The Missing Hancocks was spot-on to the point of being eerie; to call him an unsung hero of UK TV comedy of the past twenty years would be a conservative understatement. 

The line-up for tonight's show was a great one, even after putting Eldon to one side. The lovely Nathaniel Metcalfe did a great set in the first half just prior to Kevin (which was great to see, having not had him on at Mostly for a couple of years), plus we had the equally lovely and razor sharp (and consumate comic) Matt Green close the second half with his Edinburgh show 'Writing to Harvey Keitel, which I last saw when we shared a venue on the Brighton Fringe in May of this year. Kevin Eldon is a tough act to follow when so many people would clearly have come to gig to see him, but if anyone could do it, it's Matt; particularly when performing a show with such an interesting subject. 

It was also a good night for me Glyn. It was notable how relaxed I felt on stage on sharing it for the first time since Edinburgh with him. It's a whole other beast to doing stand-up on your own and was a welcome release from all the solo work I've been doing recently. We managed to dig out a piece of material we haven't done for a couple of years and give it a bit of a spring clean, which made it more fun. I also snuck in my Twitter Six Word Film Plots piece, which got a nice reaction too. The only slight setback was that sales were a little lower than usual, but then, to be fair, it had only been on sale for a week. Considering the tight turnaround. It did pretty well. On the flipside, next month we have Rory Bremner, which is already sold out. How do you like them apples?
 
(You needn't respond.) 

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...

"Speaking Words of Wisdom, Let it Shine."

Tonight saw the second instalment of BBC1’s latest advertise-a-musical-for-months-and-then-cast-it-with-performers-too-inexperienced-to-do-it-a-thon ‘Let it S̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ Shine’ (or as I call it: ‘REAL AUDITIONS ARE NOTHING LIKE THIS’). I didn’t watch it (clearly), but being reminded of how angry seeing just five minutes of it made me last week caused me to mull over what I would call a musical based on the band’s songbook, if I was responsible for it. Here are a my suggestions: IDEAS FOR TITLE OF A TAKE THAT MUSICAL: Barlow! Dirty Fat-Dancing Orange! A Million Love-changes-everything Songs Owen! Howard's End Pray Misérables Mamma Marka! Babe (with a pig as the lead) …BUT MY FAVOURITE HAS TO BE: Jason & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. "It was Orange, Orange, Orange, Orange..." (TAKE) THAT’S ENOUGH OF (TAKE) THAT.