Review – The Final Sunday Online Comedy Zoom Gig by The Comedy Crate and the Atic – 28th March 2021

Posted on March 30, 2021 by therealchrisparkle

All good things have to come to an end. And even though it’s not a good thing, let’s hope the pandemic is one of them. But before that, Sunday night saw the last (allegedly) of the excellent online comedy gigs hosted by The Atic and The Comedy Crate through the unbelievably helpful Zoom. Once again our host was Ryan Mold, getting to know some of the online attendees, including part-time actor and recycling expert David, who may have to instruct our new local council in all things Green Bin – important work! Ryan also shared some of his new material relating to the pleasures of Facebook Marketplace, which is funnier than it sounds!

Five acts for our entertainment again, and first up was Laura Lexx, with a very sparky and confident approach to the world of zoom comedy, looking back on all the most dreadful moments of the lockdowns, including home haircuts and the unashamed purchase of a pricey dog. She also had some great material contrasting natural feminism with the need to be in comfy clothes. Very engaging and funny!

Next up, and new to us, was Philip Simon, who used a very showbiz backdrop to make us feel we really were at a comedy club. By contrast he has a rather gentle delivery, and enjoys clever wordplay in his material, giving rise to excellent observations about Geordie sheep-shaggers, withdrawal agreements, and how to make a man happy. He also had some entertaining material about home-schooling, which is something a lot of people can relate to!

After Ryan was concerned about one of the audience members who had gone off – only to discover he was doing the washing-up (such is the dynamic of a zoom gig), our third act was Nick Page, also new to us, who has a very wry and dour persona; the kind of comic that makes you laugh even though he himself never breaks into a smile once. I really enjoyed his material about posh relatives, and the joys of becoming a father at the age of 50. He communicated a lot with individual audience members which integrated really well into his act – that can be a risky strategy online, but his natural authority meant no one wouldn’t dare co-operate! Very entertaining, and someone we would like to see again when the world gets back to normal.

Then came Eshaan Akbar, whom we’ve seen a few times now and always mixes great observational comedy with food for thought. I really enjoyed his sequence about getting annoyed that people don’t pronounce his name properly – which has a nice sting in the tail, his struggle to get the attention and affection of his father, and why the Covid vaccine is the perfect Empire product. He always delivers his material with great fluidity and pinpoint accuracy, and I look forward to seeing him again sometime soon too.

Our headline act was Paul McCaffrey, who had appeared on one of the other gigs earlier this spring. He also has great style and attack, and I loved all his stuff about marketing clothes through what celebrities wear, and also his observations about Twitter. He did repeat some of his material from his previous gig – but, if you hadn’t heard it before, it was very funny!

So this has been described as the last of these zoom gigs as we start to emerge from the blur of lockdown – but I wouldn’t be remotely surprised to see more online comedy from this team in the future!

Review – Comedy Crate & Atic Zoom Online Comedy Gig – 14th February 2021

Posted on February 15, 2021 by therealchrisparkle

What better way to spend a lockdown Valentine’s night than with an online comedy gig – well, no one’s going out, are they? The second of this month’s four free gigs courtesy of Northampton’s Comedy Crate and Banbury’s Rock the Atic was hosted once again by Ryan Mold, a chirpy presence who keeps everything going at a cracking pace; he did some great nostalgic material about the village video rental guy – pure VHS, nothing more up to date – who operated out of the boot of his car. I appreciated it – even if I seemed to be the only audience member to recall that unique trade model. It’s true – he never worried about the film censor’s classification when raking in the pound coins from the back of his car.

Anyway, our first act of the night was Mike Cox, new to me; a strong, confident personality and delivery, backed up with some fun material about how your priorities change during lockdown, especially regarding looking after the kids. I liked his attack, and there was a lot there for everyone to identify with – a very good start.

Next came Prince Abdi – his is a name that I’ve seen many times but never actually seen him! You can tell straight away that he is a naturally funny guy with a larger than life presence and warm personality. He had some nice material about the difficulties with performing zoom gigs – and he revealed them too, as he had a tendency to be distracted by odd sounds and movements! He touched on issues involving his Brexit-voting dad, and it was a shame that there wasn’t more time to develop his thoughts. I’d definitely like to see him again.

Our third act was Jack Barry, whom we’d seen before doing an Edinburgh try-out at the Comedy Crate in 2017. He instantly sets up a terrific rapport which is a very difficult thing to do online! And he had some great material about working with a masked audience, how FOMO has no place in lockdown, the trials of learning Spanish and the wisdom of responsible drug dealers. He packed a lot into his short set and it worked really well – a very funny ten minutes!

Next was Kelly Convey, whom we saw last year at one of the Comedy Crate’s gigs in the garden of the Black Prince in Northampton. Another comic who connects surprisingly easily via a zoom thumbnail, she lost no time in giving us some great material about how not to treat the military presence at your local Covid test centre, the trials and tribulations of a zoom hen do and how Conspiracy Theories in the Plague Year are nothing new. Her winning personality enables her to breeze through her set as if she were live on a stage. Extremely funny and very enjoyable!

Our headline act – can you have Headline Acts on a zoom call? Can’t see why not – was Paul McCaffrey, whom we last saw in one of those Johnny Vegas comedy extravaganzas during the 2017 Leicester Comedy Festival. This time, as then, he was on ace form, with fantastic comedy observations ranging from lockdown overdrinking, through TV repeats, to a wonderful exploration of how you can read a script wrong (he was miscast as the Witchfinder General in a production of Vinegar Tom.) Very likeable, a great presence and a terrific way to end the show.

I’ve already booked for next week – so should you! Free tickets available here.

Review – Just The Tonic Comedy Club with Johnny Vegas, Leicester Comedy Festival, Hansom Hall, Leicester, 25th February 2017

Posted on March 3, 2017 by therealchrisparkle

For our final splurge on Comedy Saturday we thought we’d go for broke and see Johnny Vegas fronting a Comedy Club special, with him as the compere and three or four acts all doing their own thing. None of us had ever seen Johnny Vegas live before and didn’t know quite what to expect. I’d seen him on TV of course – guesting on panel shows, being one of the best things about Benidorm, and playing a surprisingly effective self-combustible Krook in the BBC’s Bleak House 12 years ago. I don’t think I was prepared for someone so eloquent, creative, unpredictable and thoroughly naughty as he proved himself to be on Saturday night!

He told us that he’d already done an earlier show – not compering but proper stand-up – which had gone off at a tangent because of one particular audience member, but which hadn’t really gone well because the audience didn’t come with him on his flights of fancy. That must be a really awkward situation; because just ten minutes in the company of Mr Vegas tells you that flights of fancy are the order of the day, and any pre-prepared material is probably there just as a backup if all else fails. He’d barely been on a few seconds when he started picking his way through the front row looking for suitable quarry – and there were two guys. The first guy started to bat back the questions in that semi-confident, taciturn but I can handle this way; and then he caught sight of his mate. 99% of the audience didn’t get a look at this guy because we were all sitting behind him. But he obviously appealed to Mr Vegas’ sense of nurturing the oppressed, because this guy had obviously allowed himself to grow the most appalling, all-over-the-place apology for a beard, so that he looked a disgrace and Mr Vegas was not going to let him get away with it.

Whilst this was not Mr Vegas’ only comic tack of the evening, everything did seem to revolve around Useless Beardy Guy. There was no end to the gentle humiliation heading his way during the course of the night, which grew in complexity and status as Mr Vegas ended up encouraging a member of the audience – a rather mouthy lady (perhaps not inappropriately) – to (and I quote) w*nk him off for £500. Others, not all of them with female voices, attempted to undercut this offer, but Mr Vegas wasn’t holding a Dutch Auction. After the next act, the original volunteer had slumped forward in her seat in a paralytic stupor** but Mr Vegas had made an onstage promise that the w*nking would take place. Naturally troubled by this, it culminated in Mr Vegas holding an uncomfortable phone call with his late-night lawyer, where he was concerned that he might now be contractually obliged to cause Beardy Guy to climax in his (Mr Vegas’) hand, in a council-run property (and he admitted sotto voce that he didn’t really want to) and would he need a licence for this? The whole thing was absolutely hilarious and I was shaking with laughter.

In amongst all that shenanigans Johnny Vegas introduced three special guests, all of whom were on absolutely top form. First up was Kevin Dewsbury, whom we have seen many times before, most recently about four hours earlier as the TV chef-cum-walking disaster in Kev’s Komedy Kitchen. Mr Dewsbury took us through his embarrassing St Patrick’s Day moment and his marvellous routine about enunciating foreign words perfectly – I’m so guilty of that myself. He had a whole load of new material as well, perfectly suiting his matey, blokey persona and he got a great reception from the audience. Our second guest was new to us, Guz Khan, still a teacher until two years ago. He is a real find, with a superbly confident stage presence (I bet his kids paid attention to his lessons) and great material that didn’t shy away from the tough subjects like ISIS and Morning Assembly. He absolutely aced the crowd. Our final act, also new to us, was Paul McCaffrey, with some great observations on the wisdom of the fitness guru who recommends replacing chocolate with raw veg, and, whilst on holiday, eschewing licking shots from a nymphette’s belly button in Ibiza in preference to playing cards on the balcony with the wife (“after all, we went to the pub last night…”)

But it really was Mr Vegas’ night. He has such a quick mind and the ability to winkle something humorously ridiculous from the most banal of situations. He’d have you believe he was raising money for some spurious charity, or that he needed to quickly nip backstage to check he hadn’t left a camp stove on whilst leaving Useless Beardy Guy singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for our amusement. He created a wonderful visual image of applying his backside to the TV screen during This Morning so that it looked like Piers Morgan was rimming him; and he had a battle with his braces, before the third act, causing slowly descending trousers, from which he produced tons of hilarious physical comedy. The next morning all six of us kept on remembering varied elements of his reckless night’s entertainment; it was officially fabulous. As was our entire Leicester Comedy Festival experience, and we’re hoping to make it an annual event, when we all return and throw ourselves at the festival for an entire weekend. Here’s to 2018!

**She said she was a teacher so Mr Vegas wondered if it was the SATs and not the alcohol that had sent her off to sleep.

P. S. I discovered later that Mr Vegas doesn’t really have a late-night lawyer with whom he can discuss such delicate topics – it was Kevin Dewsbury on the other end of the phone. I’m embarrassed to say though that it didn’t occur to me that this was a stunt; if anyone is going to have resort to a late-night Comedy Lawyers 4U contact it would be Johnny Vegas. He must need this kind of advice all the time.

P. P. S. The show started at 8.30pm and was due to finish at 10.30pm. Shortly before midnight you could see the promoter agitatedly standing near the stage trying to get Johnny Vegas’ attention so that he would wrap it all up. I did tell you he was unpredictable.