Christmas Comedy Crate gigs are like buses – you don’t get any all year round and then two come along within a week of each other! A super packed house at the Charles Bradlaugh had a brilliant night of it with not four but five funny people to send us into the Festive Season with thoroughly tickled ribs.
Our MC for the night was Paul Revill, and he is totally ace at the job. He has a warm and reassuring style that lulls you into telling him all the things he wants to know and then turns them around into fantastic comedy. Poor 18-year-old Seb was centre front row and found himself the subject of a lot of attention; and I loved Paul’s comedic response to discovering that an audience member worked for Specsavers. Whether it’s comparing favourite Quality Streets or deciding which part of the body will give the love, he keeps the whole thing moving at a cracking pace and made us all feel completely at home.
Our first act was Josh Pugh, always an unpredictable, sparky comic presence, with a lovely sense of the ridiculous and a misleadingly accomplished delivery. He has great material about being a new father, and excellent observations about the attitude progression from parent to grandparent – and everything he says is absolutely true. He sets up a great relationship with the audience and you know from the start you’re going to have a great time in his company. A superb way to start the evening.
A slightly different structure to this show, we then had two comedians after the first interval, and both were new to us. First up was Nuala Ryan, a slightly more mature pocket rocket of a comedian, with an appealing likeable presence and some good material about relationships as you grow older – or the lack of them. Thoroughly entertaining and lots to laugh at!
Next was Jin Hao Li, a remarkable new find in the comedy world; a young man with a softly surreal approach to his material, incredibly quirky, deceptively benign and with the ability to twist a story in a totally unexpected direction at the turn of a hat. Unsettling at first, but once you get his drift, he’s completely hilarious.
Our headliner was Matt Richardson, who hits the ground running with a sequence of great comic material about married life and parenting. He has terrific routines about men dealing with tampons and no longer being able to decide for themselves what time they go to bed, and they’re hilarious in both their inventiveness and their accuracy. To be fair, he did give us quite a lot of the same material as the last time we saw him, but it’s so good it’s always worth a re-run!
Thanks to the Crate team for bringing so much comedy to Northampton and its environs, and we look forward to another jam-packed year of laughter in 2024!