March 2017 - Page 2 of 2 - The Real Chrisparkle

For our second show on Comedy Saturday, Mrs Chrisparkle and I took the gang to see Kev’s Komedy Kitchen, a show we’d already seen in Edinburgh last summer, which we both found knock-out funny, and was in fact the recipient of last year’s Chrisparkle Award for Edinburgh Best of the Rest – which is rather a graceless title that I think I need to alter. It appears that this was probably the last ever performance of the show in this format, so any spoilers I reveal in this review, aren’t really.

You’re greeted by Floor Manager Will who explains that it’s a recording of a TV show and warns us not to wave at the cameras. As if we would. He also advises us to laugh at anything Kev says that’s funny – or thinks is funny; and whilst happily reminiscing over Kev’s successful tours in the past, he reminds us not to mention 2012… as it wasn’t a good year. Naturally, the only person who mentions 2012 as the show progresses, is Will; but there is a limit to which even he can keep up that chirpy positivity when you’re dealing with a bunch of pensioners watching the recording of a show that is pure bumf, and featuring guests with the social graces of Sooty and Sweep but with none of their sense of humour. By the time the show’s started he’s already dissed Kev for attracting nothing like the number of punters as Stephen Bailey had the previous night, and as for that Romesh Ranganathan….

I digress (like he did). Will’s introductory speech totally sets the scene for what’s to come. Even before we’ve met Kev we know a) he’s not as funny as he thinks he is, and b) his life and career had a big tumble which he hasn’t come to terms with. You just know that during the course of the next hour we’re going to see this guy start to (apple) crumble and watch his career go down the (hot) pan. If that sounds rather sad – well, it is! But that’s the strength of the show: watching Kev kling to the wreckage as his guest celebrity turns out to be po-faced, patronising and thick as two short fish fingers, as his guest comic gets more laughs than he does, thus building up Kev’s resentment against him, and as his high-flying guest chef lets him down at the last minute to be replaced by Marco Pierre Shite. It is the comedy of cruelty, played straight to emphasise the seriousness behind the laughter, but always with the accent on the comic rather than the cruel – until it descends into a semi-apocalyptic free-for-all at the end.

Rather like when I worked in Contracts Management for the local council, anything that could go wrong in the recording of Kev’s Komedy Kitchen, does go wrong. The pre-prepared meal for them to taste is inedible because Josh the assistant forgot to put the oven on, (or rather, in the case of Saturday’s performance, he says he did put the oven on, much to Will’s surprise – nicely handled, sir) the po-faced celebrity refuses to try any of the food, the celebrity chef’s cordon bleu creation is a Sainsbury’s Scotch Egg and the guest comic returns at the end to physically assault Kev for being such a knob. All the while Kev is progressively getting more and more inebriated as the po-faced celebrity refuses to sample the Chardonnay, which is really all the excuse he needs to gulp it all.

It’s a genuinely hilarious comic creation that, once started, is a crash course to oblivion for our Kev with no way out. Beautiful performances from everyone, with Will Hutchby positively effervescent with enthusiasm until the sequence of disasters makes him tear his hair out, and Hannah Blakeley is spot on as the ghastly Grace Loretta, whose freakish Orwello ends up writhing all over the stage mad as a box of frogs. She had me at Halloumi (you had to be there). Mike Newall brings all the vibrant personality of Liam Gallagher on a downer to his dour celebrity chef, and, as the guest comic, Liam Pickford wiped the floor with his erudite gag about how a Southern fried chicken baguette mixes cuisines of two origins and therefore could be seen as cousins who might kiss at a Christening. He also wiped the floor with Kev once he’d slung him a few left hooks. Plus, of course, Kevin Dewsbury brilliant as the eponymous Kev, brave in the face of adversity, prickly when his professionalism is doubted, conducting hilariously awful interviews, pushing old puns to the limit and beautifully portraying that day in a person’s life when, as one disaster follows another after another, they just reach the conclusion: f*ck it.

As suspected, our fellow comedy-goers loved it too. Even though the original Komedy Kitchen has now gone to that great Aga in the sky, it will be back in a new format as The Second Cumin and I for one can’t wait to catch it in Edinburgh later this year!

Having seen a motley collection of the great and the okay in Pick of the Fest and the unforgettable ultimate therapy performance by Mr Richard Gadd, we thought we’d give this year’s Leicester Comedy Festival a gala send-off by seeing three productions on the final Saturday. To make it go with a swing Mrs Chrisparkle and I were accompanied by Lady Duncansby and her butler Sir William as well as my noble Lord Liverpool and the Countess of Cockfosters. Six Characters in search of Comic Relief, one might say.

I’d recognised Lucy Pearman’s name from the Edinburgh Fringe schedules but we didn’t see her show last summer. You can find some rather wry videos of her doing comic things online and I thought she would be worth a punt, if you’ll pardon the expression. WIP and a Cabbage, I’m sensing, was taking her show about a Cabbage (stay with me) and adding some WIP to it – but I’m not entirely sure. This description is all you need to know about the background to the show: ‘Traditionally, unmarried girls were sent into the veg garden to choose the ‘perfect’ cabbage’. Who knew?

Lucy is the new maid who has to escape the clutches of the lascivious Lord Wynd and has three things that she must do: avoid kissing him, find the best cabbage, and make sure she doesn’t reveal her bad side. I know this for a fact, because she asked me to read these instructions out to her. It could have been worse; she got Lord Liverpool to hold up a piece of paper that read “New Maid” for ages and then made him sit on a collapsible chair. We always knew where she would find the best cabbage, because she handed it out at the beginning of the show; in feeble comparison, others, like my namesake Chris (fistbump), Lord Liverpool and a distinguished looking chap in the second row were all given (let’s not pretend to be proud) a Brussels Sprout each. How it shamed our manhoods.

I realise as I’m telling you all this, gentle reader, that probably none of it makes the remotest sense. However, the proof of the pudding in a comedy show is how much you laugh, and I have to say we all laughed an awful lot. Ms Pearman has a lovely stage presence and is a gifted comic and clown, using a sotto voce delivery that can reduce a grown man to pure humiliation. “I’m beginning to regret you” she quietly admitted, as I failed to keep up with her dictation, much to the amusement of everyone else. Having established earlier on if I could read (I could), she also found out I could write. “Show off, aren’t you” was her only response.

Ms Pearman embodies gentle lunacy with a withering touch. She reminded me of what an extra member of Spymonkey might be like as she sprang from innocent maiden to red-raw monster and back again (you had to be there). Very assured with any curved balls the audience sent her way, it was forty minutes of pure silliness and I absolutely loved it. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for what she’s doing next. And next time, I’ll bring my own cabbage.