Rory O'Hanlon Archives - The Real Chrisparkle

Paul Chowdhry, the legendary sweet-talkin’ bastard, comes on stage and advises us that, if we’d seen him before here at the Royal and Deansgate (sic) in Live Innit (we had), or What’s Happening White People (we hadn’t – but he didn’t mention PC’s World, which we had), he’s now a completely different person from the one before. He has reinvented himself as a family-friendly comedian. And then he proceeds to lambast the front row with a series of what I presume are Hindi swear words and body-part slang terms. He was only teasing. He hasn’t changed.

But I’m jumping ahead of myself because the show started with his support act, Rory O’Hanlon. We knew we’d seen him recently but couldn’t quite place when – turns out it was in the back garden of the Black Prince three months ago. He’s a terrific comic, with a typical Dublin gift of the gab, and with some very funny material. Sadly – for us – 90% of his act was what we had heard in August, so we were left to admire his comedic skills rather than actually laugh out loud at the material, as we had done the first time. Presumably he was new to everyone else as he went down a storm in the audience. With a very serendipitous turn of events, he had been bad-mouthing how horrible Coventry is, when a group of rowdy chaps turned up late and made their way to the middle of the front row. Where have you come from, asked Mr O’H. Coventry, came the answer. Thus a major part of the groundwork was set for the whole evening.

After the interval, and the Coventry guys had got even more tanked up, Paul Chowdhry must have looked down on the rowdy Sikhs in the front row waving their lagers at him, and thought this is going to be a doddle. Time and again, during the course of the evening, he went back to them to take the mickey in the way that really only Mr C can. Ridiculing their speech, their behaviour, their protestations of sobriety, everything; it’s amazing how he can be so directly aggressive to individual audience members – and they love it. And so do the rest of the audience. If you go to see a Paul Chowdhry gig, so much of your time with this extraordinarily skilled and quick-witted comic will be spent with him trading the most dangerous banter with the audience, getting away with murder, spreading the comedy of offence far and wide, and, against all odds, it works so well.

Two things help here; one is Mr C’s superb mimicry skills, which allow him to populate his chat with a range of stereotype accents, from his posh Susan and Giles voices, and his Neanderthal Dave voice, to a full panoply of Asian imitations. His voices can be hectoring, whining, intimidating, offended, and so on; in other words, all the emotions, in all the races. The other is that he attracts such a wide variety of audience members from all races, all ages, and, particularly useful, all family groupings. Nothing can give him more scope than an extended Asian family of parents, aunties, uncles, kids, grannies and so on. As he pointed out, the lockdown rules where you could only meet six people at a time were specifically for white people. For Bengalis, six people constitutes the queue for the bathroom.

The show wasn’t just a sequence of audience interactions with no interconnecting theme other than insults; not quite, at any rate. As part of the show, Mr C dwelt on everyone’s lockdown and pandemic experiences, including how we now do our best to suppress a cough, which, in the good old days, would have been an open invitation for the most wallowed-in, phlegmatic and catarrh-filled airway clearing exercise – as he frequently and very audibly demonstrated. He does a brilliant take-down of those who take their vaccination advice from Nicki Minaj – probably worth your ticket price alone – and he fantasises about a Saudi Arabian version of TV’s Naked Attraction.

If you’re like us, you’d probably think, “I know that Paul Chowdhry is a master of the comedy of offence, and I’m going to appreciate it for what it is, and not get offended”. Wrong. Despite our best efforts, we were offended on at least two occasions, and, as Mr C also tells us, it’s as white people being offended on behalf of others – whilst those “others” are probably not in the least offended. If it’s good to be challenged in the theatre, I can’t see why it shouldn’t be good to be challenged by comedy too.

As when we saw Live Innit, I think it’s fair to say that I enjoyed it more than Mrs Chrisparkle. Whilst still laughing lots, she finds Mr C’s repetitive and aggressive style a little overwhelming – or her killer description, relentless – whereas I either don’t notice it, don’t mind it, or just find it funny. It’s a boy thing, innit. His tour is nearing its end, with a few more dates until Nottingham on 16^th December. And, despite the title, don’t bring the kids.

Whilst Mrs Chrisparkle and I are still wary about going into comedy clubs with neither social distancing nor decent ventilation, it’s great to have the opportunity to see live comedy in the extensive gardens of the Black Prince; really, it’s what picnic tables were made for. We were joined by Lord and Lady Prosecco, and Prinz Mark von Köln, heir to the Prosecco estate, for an evening of 100% top bankable comedy – there wasn’t a down moment to be had all evening.

Our MC was the brilliant Javier Jarquin, whom we’ve seen at Screaming Blue Murder and also doing his excellent Card Ninja show in Edinburgh – I was wondering if he’d get the cards out, but it probably wasn’t the right occasion. He has a terrific rapport with the audience which lasted all the way through the evening. He gets lots of great material out of the juxtaposition between his appearance and his accent, being a Chinese/Latino Kiwi. I loved his explanation of the difference between the Aussie and Kiwi accents, and what it must have been like the first time the All Blacks started a game with a haka. It’s always worth booking when Mr J is on the bill.

Our first act was Dublin’s Rory O’Hanlon, whom we’ve seen once before as a guest on a Spank! in the halcyon pre-pandemic days. His act is packed with very funny, very relatable material; also peppered with some excellent accents! I loved the idea of getting your vaccine at Lidl and the perils of taking a flight home from Australia with Ryanair. He also has some excellent material about moving back in with your first girlfriend. Full of attack, great timing – just a very funny act.

Next up, and new to us, was Tadiwa Mahlunge, the only member of his family to be saddled with a traditional name, much to his annoyance, which provides him with lots of excellent material, including the downsides of his name Tad sounding like Dad, which gets him into a lot of trouble. A quieter approach from the other acts in the show last night, which makes him stand out as maybe more thoughtful and with material that comes genuinely from his own experiences. I must admit, I didn’t get all his references, but then I am quite old. Very enjoyable!

Our headline act, and also new to us, was the alter ego of Colin Hoult, Anna Mann. Star of low budget cult films and plays that nobody has seen, she takes us through some reminiscences of her thespian days, including a hilarious re-invention of The Tempest, how she was in the sequel of Much Ado, side mentions of ex- and late-husbands, and her continued quest to Stop the Fascists in material she freely admits hasn’t changed in four years. We all knew Lesley the Yoga Teacher would turn out to be a Fascist. It’s a remarkable act, incredibly funny, totally convincing, with just the right amount of knowing looks and audience asides to convey that it is all make believe yet still you lap up every word of her experiences as though they were gospel. Absolutely brilliant, and we’d definitely love to see her again.