Tag Archives: Scott Bennett

Review – Comedy Crate at the Charles Bradlaugh, Northampton, 17th January 2025

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What’s this? Haven’t we already had a Comedy Crate session at the Bradlaugh this month? Yes indeed – but those nice people at the CC kindly arranged a bonus night out in January. The venue was totally packed – if you believe there’s no demand for comedy in January, think again!

Our host for the evening was Russell Arathoon, a jovial cove who reminded me of how a drag artist would host a comedy show if they weren’t in drag – if that makes any sense. Immensely cheeky and saucy, he was quickly pulled up by a group of three ladies for mispronouncing the name of the venue (not to mention the fact that he later said we were in Nottingham). He also had plenty of fun teasing the work outing from the paper and cardboard company and the Take That tribute act in the front row. Sometimes a little near the knuckle, but extremely likeable and animated, so the evening flowed like a dream.

Our first act was the sensational Scott Bennett, who delivers his inventive and original material with deft ease and wonderful confidence. He has such great observations on long-term marriage, what children can do to a car, and why he’s stopped going to the “by hand” car wash. Extremely funny and natural, as well as being very generous with his time which flew by. An expert of his genre.

Unusually, we had two acts for our second segment, both new to us, younger comedians who are obviously developing their craft. First up was Abbie Edwards, who projects a slightly neurotic persona of a young person who’s lead a sheltered past, juggling a Christian upbringing with the sheer joy of discovering sex. Very nicely paced and with good confidence. She was followed by Osman Shibli,who has a strong likeable stage presence and brings entertaining observations on his unusual Pakistani/Qatari/British heritage. Both acts need to firm up on stronger punchlines and nail them more decisively, but, let’s face it, Mr Bennett was always going to be a very tough act to follow. They both acquitted themselves extremely well and can look towards a good future!

Our headliner was Ian Stone, an act who has been around a good while, which makes it even more surprising that we’ve never seen him before. Much of his material is based on the fact that he is Jewish, which he tackles head on, no holds barred, daring to say the things that only he can. Amongst his gems are some great material about his wayward dad, and the secret to forming a credible opinion on any subject. He’s a complete master of his art, and, frankly, I laughed so much that it hurt.

Double portions of Comedy Crate comedy in January! The next gig at the Bradlaugh is on 13th February, with another amazing lineup. Go on, you know it makes sense; at £13 quid a ticket it’s the best value comedy in town.

P. S. No names, no pack drill, but it’s very antisocial to get the vapes out in a comedy club. It’s not big and it’s not clever. If it happens again, there’ll be trouble.

Review – Comedy Crate Edinburgh Previews – Scott Bennett and Sara Barron, The Lamplighter, Northampton, 8th July 2024

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With just a few weeks to go before the Edinburgh Fringe kicks off, Northampton is in full Edinburgh Preview Season with another of the Comedy Crate’s top value and great entertainment gigs giving the chance of a useful preview show to some amazing names in comedy. It’s always fascinating to witness comedy shows being crafted and honed before your very eyes, in preparation for the Big Festival ahead. And Monday’s sold out show (yes, you don’t often see “sold out” and “Monday” in the same sentence) provided two hours of super-impressive comedy as two comedians dotted their I’s and crossed their T’s in the pursuit of perfection.

First up was Sara Barron, who will be taking her show Anything For You to the Monkey Barrel venue on Blair Street, Edinburgh, from 30th July to 25th August (except Mondays). Ms Barron pointed out from the start that she has the main content of the show sorted, plus a few excellent add-ons to be dovetailed in, but as yet the full structure of the show is to be settled on – and also a decent ending. However, given the utter brilliance of the material she delivered in the Preview, I don’t think she’s got much to worry about.

The main premise of the show is that she thinks she’s better than her mother – that sounds a bit big-headed, but then again, her mother also thinks that she was better than her own mother, so it sounds like reasonable evolutionary progress. Sara Barron gives us a hilarious insight into what her mother is really like – and it’s a delightful mix of outrageous caricature and total credibility. En route, you end up feeling sorry for both Ms Barron’s father and husband, as they both come in for more than their fair share of gentle torture from their womenfolk!

Sara Barron has a superb stage presence with brilliantly attacking delivery, and a very funny way of conveying the social differences between Britain and America without ever becoming unsubtle about it. I loved her account of that domestic moment when your husband lets out a pitiful “ouch” from another room; and there’s a lovely sequence concerning how and when she agrees to have sex. Even in its current loose format it’s an incredibly funny hour, and when Ms Barron has the show fully shaped it’s going to be a terrific Edinburgh winner this year.

After the interval, we had an hour in the presence of Scott Bennett, who is bringing his show Blood Sugar Baby to Edinburgh at Just the Tonic at the Mash House on Guthrie Street, Edinburgh, every day from 13th to 25th August. It’s listed on the Edinburgh Fringe site as a Work in Progress, but apart from Mr B using a paper script at this stage, it struck me as being a pretty nigh-on finished product – and a riot of laughter from start to finish.

It doesn’t sound like an obvious starting point for a comedy show – the account of his daughter Olivia’s congenital medical condition, which meant she had very low blood sugar from the tiniest age – and at first you wonder if it’s going to be one of those uncomfortable comedy performances where a comedian uses the audience as therapy by getting it all out of their system. Definitely not so in this case. For one thing, we can start with a happy ending as Olivia is alive and well and being a dreadful troublesome teenager that fulfils her current job description; but also the several intervening years have clearly put distance between Mr B and the horror of the baby’s earliest months which provides us all with safety and reassurance.

The show takes us, steadily and factually, through the complete procedure of identifying that something was wrong with their baby, finding out what it was, how it could be put right, and the treatment she received. Scott Bennett delivers his material in a very structured, logical, almost episodical sequence; and the benefit of this is that every episode receives a comedy side commentary which explodes the seriousness of the situation with the humour of everyday life and brilliant observations. He peppers his routine with hilarious self-deprecations and cunning callbacks. Towards the end of his hour I actually found that I had exhausted myself with too much laughter – that’s got to be a good sign.

Two Edinburgh productions that will have a great time at the Fringe. And it’s not long now until the Comedy Crate Weekender with 26 acts available over two days! Can’t wait!

Review – Another Comedy Crate/Rock the Atic Sunday Night Online – 7th March 2021

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These online comedy gigs courtesy of the Comedy Crate and the Atic have proved very successful so the initial plan for four Sundays throughout February has extended into March, and I for one am delighted about that! It’s a great way to relax into your Sunday evening before preparing for another Monday of Big Business and Commercial Challenges…  sorry, I mean, staying at home and not knowing what day it is from one day to the next.

Our regular host Ryan Mold welcomed us all on board with his bright, cheery presence and some great new material including an embarrassing remote conversation with people on a bus, and the joys of being colour-blind. It’s much more difficult to engage with a zoom audience than a conventional audience because there’s no hiding place in a regular club or theatre, whereas online you can pretend not to hear or indeed just switch your cam off whilst you go and cook the evening meal! But he does a great job at keeping us all involved.

It was a five-act show last night – virtually Shakespearean in construct. First off the block was Scott Bennett, whom we saw a few years ago supporting Rob Brydon at the Royal and Derngate and he was brilliant. Again yesterday he has a fantastic, lively presence with great, surefooted delivery and heaps of material to share. I loved all his observations about taking kids on an aeroplane, his printer being his mortal enemy and, most of all, those unromantic evenings when you’re “trying for a baby”. The jokes were overflowing as was the laughter. A really great start.

Next up was Paul F Taylor, whom we’d also seen at a Screaming Blue Murder seven years ago. He has a terrific zany approach to his comedy with a nice balance of the surreal and the stupid. Last night he did a great routine about how one of your hands is a reliable tool all your life but the other is a hanger-on – very funny. I also liked his exploration of which professions are suffering most during lockdown. I’m not sure the zoom medium works that well for his particular comedic style; you can tell he yearns for interpersonal stage connections to make things flow for the best. But he has great material and has a very likeable stage persona.

Middle act, and a last minute change to our schedule, was Jenny Collier. New to us, I liked how she uses her Queen’s English accent to shock with the use of the C word! In fact she didn’t hold back from discussing some of the seamier sides of life, but it was all done with great timing and a very engaging personality. She had some great material about doing the NHS clap in a Welsh village, and also the very recognisable observations about life as a GP receptionist. Very enjoyable!

Next came Jack Gleadow, also new to us, and clearly a naturally funny guy, with a great feel for language (I loved his malapropism for Covid) and silliness (as in his impression of David Attenborough). He was also responsible for my favourite joke of the night, concerning comments made on porn videos, and we were his brief, but very funny, participants in his Meet The Audience section. He’s definitely someone we’d like to see IRL (as the young people say) when this is all over.

And our headline act was the marvellous Troy Hawke, Milo McCabe’s brilliant Clark Gable lookalike comic creation, and probably the only person on a zoom call who’d naturally don a smoking jacket. Again, he’s another comic who thrives on the interaction with the audience – we’ve seen him do Spank! in Edinburgh a few  times – which is a challenge on zoom but he rises to it superbly, remarking on people’s living rooms, camera angles, lighting and so on – a perfect alternative to teasing them in person. His unexpected accents – such as that of the Glaswegian audience member – are terrifically funny as they’re so at odds with Troy’s own voice and demeanour. I really enjoyed his material about impostor syndrome and nurses versus influencers. An excellent way to end the evening.

I’m already booked for next week’s show which has the promise of some terrific acts – are you?

Review – Rob Brydon, I Am Standing Up, Derngate, Northampton, 4th March 2017

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We’d seen Rob Brydon before, back in 2009, when he last toured the UK – it was just before I started blogging so I can’t easily check back to see how much we enjoyed it – but I do remember thinking he was good fun and so I was perfectly happy to see him again almost 8 years later, to see how he’s getting on. Of course, his career has gone from strength to strength since then, with endless panel games, guest appearances, loads of voiceovers, and so on; when we first saw him, the third series of Gavin and Stacey was still getting its first airing on TV. Even so, he’ll still break into a rendition of Barry Islands in the Stream at the drop of a laverbread.

But before considering Mr Brydon’s role in the show on Saturday night, the first twenty minutes were spent in the company of a supporting act – Scott Bennett. He’s a bright and breezy Yorkshireman who wasted absolutely no time in making the most of his introductory slot, with lots of very good material about family relationships – especially with his dad, Roy. Roy’s the kind of guy who has a structural plan about how to get the most food onto your carvery plate (start with the meat first as your base layer and work your way up). Good comedy of recognition that – because if we ourselves are not the person who tackles a buffet strategically, we all know someone who is. I also liked Mr Bennett’s observation of people out on a romantic meal date night – each on their separate phones, Facebooking the people they should have married. He was very funny and got a really good reception, despite the fact that he wasn’t Rob Brydon.

Talking of whom, Mr Brydon is essentially a very funny man, with a delightful sense of comic joy about almost everything he does. He’s so self-deprecating which is always an attractive trait – like when he’s asked if James Corden still rings him; answer, yes he does, which gives rise to a joke that’s both anti-Brydon and anti-the town in which he’s performing; but it’s very cleverly done. When something particularly funny happens or someone says a great one-liner – even if it comes from the audience – he will break off the routine and rush over to a little table and write the joke down in a notebook, saying that next week’s show will be amazing with all this new material – thereby implying that this show, and his comedy hosting skills, aren’t as good. It always gets a laugh when he returns upstage to jot it down.

He has that ability that the best comics have of being able to weave together separate strands from different members of the audience and come back to them later in the show from a new angle. Towards the end he creates songs that mention all the individuals with whom he’s spoken earlier on. Again, very cleverly done, very inventive and always very funny. In our show Mr Brydon explored comic possibilities with George and Lucy – clearly the young middle class couple – and encouraged them always to close the loo door if they want to keep romance alive; we met Cynthia, the Elvis fan who’s not as young as she said she was, and who was in for a particular treat right at the end; and we met Tim and Lisa, bravely sat in the front row; she’d stoically worked for Mr Kipling for 32 years, woman and girl, never complaining and always ‘umble, which gave rise to Mr Brydon from then on referring to her as a Dickensian Woman, doing wonderful impressions of a dowdy drudge with mock-19th century language. Totally bizarre, but it really worked.

As you might expect, he does a prolonged sequence when he’s impersonating celebrities out in the jungle, Ant and Dec style, which is very good but I think he overplays the Tom Jones impersonation. It isn’t really quite as good as he seems to think, and he makes him into a grotesque that I don’t really feel is justified (but, hey ho, that’s just me.) He did a Ronnie Corbett as a request from the audience, brilliantly conveys the essence of Ken Bruce by just mumbling with the occasional 88 to 91 thrown in, and tells very funny stories involving Steve Coogan (roar). Towards the end he gears the subject matter towards the Welsh language so that he can sing All Through the Night in the original Welsh, Ar Hyd y Nos. Where’s the comedy in that? It’s when he then gives you the Google Translate version; thus proving it’s always worth paying for a proper translator. There were reminiscences about Uncle Bryn, and dealing with how weak your wee stream is when you get to his age (I’m five years older, so I totally sympathise), and there was even a charming brief hark back to the golden days of Blockbuster. It was all very lovely.

But, do you know what, gentle reader? I kind of wanted more. I needed something a little more challenging. It was incredibly cosy, incredibly comfortable, a veritable Black Forest Gateau of delectation; and if that’s what you’re after, you’ll get it in spades. Maybe I ask too much. You don’t expect Rob Brydon to be all caustic and cynical, and I don’t think I wanted that either. It was all just a little too easy. I’m probably way out of synch with everyone else on this, because he went down extremely well. It was just, ever so slightly, insubstantial. He’s clearly a really nice guy and extremely funny, so I feel a bit mean criticising him like that. But I have to be honest, don’t I? His tour continues throughout March all over England – and if you haven’t already booked your tickets, it’s probably sold out.

P. S. Either inflation is higher than I thought, overheads have gone up, or someone’s stock is rising; top price stalls seats for Rob Brydon in 2009 cost £19.50 each. In 2017, virtually the same seats for the same show in the same theatre cost £32.50 each including my friends’ discount. Interesting, no?