Tom Houghton Archives - The Real Chrisparkle

I remember when Tez Ilyas came to Northampton for a gig and within the first five minutes he’d mistaken the town for Peterborough (not a good move) and said that we didn’t have any cricket clubs here (an even worse move). Fortunately we were a kindly bunch and forgave him, but only after we insisted on a grovelling apology.

Tom Houghton started his show last Saturday in a similarly winning fashion. Good evening Nottingham! he yelled from off stage, which was met with the appropriate level of jeering. I think it was a genuine error. If he starts all his gigs with mislocating himself for comic effect it could be a very risky business. Fortunately Northampton and Nottingham are not known for any local rivalries – primarily because they’re not remotely local to each other.

Perhaps Absolute Shambles isn’t a bad name for the show, because he also proceeded to tell us that normally he would have a support act on first to warm us all up – but, basically, he forgot to book one. Thus his support act was – Tom Houghton! No problem, of course, because The Honourable Tom has got more material than you cram into a wardrobe, so he started off by looking for posh people in the audience. Nobody confessed; but in the interval there were conversations about how I wasn’t going to mention I went to private school and nor was I, too perilous an admission to make.

Tom saw through us though, and worked out who the posh people were – including the four sixteen-year-old girls in the third row who came in for a lot of gentle jibing. Tom’s big thing is his posh background, having only recently moved out of the family home in The Tower of London. But lockdown affected both the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate, and we got a little insight into the fact that his mental health suffered during those dark days of 2020. Other nuggets that he shared with us included a surprisingly lucrative sideline in selling pictures of his feet to foot fetishists, and his experience as being part of the reality TV programme The Circle.

He has a warm and likeable persona which endears him to the audience, so even when he’s being very cheeky with us – and occasionally rather insulting! – we still lap it up. The show runs at a good pace and, even if it occasionally feels slightly aimless and wandering, there’s always lots to enjoy and plenty of belly laughs to be had. And there’s no doubt, he is an extremely safe pair of hands, and the total master of the art of the callback. The show was sold out, but Mr H is returning to Nottingham, I mean Northampton, to do it all again on 30^th June – this time in the Royal Theatre. Recommended!

As the nights begin to draw in and the thermometer starts to plummet there was still time for one last Comedy Crate night in the garden of the Black Prince before it simply gets just too damn chilly. We were accompanied by our friends Doctor Eurovision (not a real doctor) and the Duke of Dallington, who was dipping his toes into the local comedy scene for the first time. Fortunately, the entertainment was more than enough to keep us (relatively) toasty before Johnson’s curfew fell upon us all.

Our host for the night was Tom Houghton, whom we saw at Spank! last year – who knows if and when that’ll ever happen again – and he’s a very jovial chap with a slightly posh boy accent and an air of natural authority. He handled the extremely varied crowd with great aplomb and really grew into MC role as the night progressed. Great stuff.

We’d seen two of the acts before but they’re all good for a re-watch, especially post Covid-lockdown, which inspires everyone with fresh ideas. First up was Eleanor Tiernan, who has a gently Irish lilting style that can conceal a few hard-hitting punches. Her material is intelligent and quirky, with a few surreal insights about hair dryers and responding to unexpected requests in a taxi. I really enjoyed her take on the perils and pitfalls of coming out as gay at the start of the pandemic. A very enjoyable start to the show.

Next came Josh Pugh, whom I thought we had seen before, but I was wrong! He comes on, all guns blazing, with some brilliantly funny material that had me in hysterics pretty much all the way through. He had a great sequence about how far do you take philosophical responses to break-ups, plus Jesus falling back on his carpentry skills and unmentionable things with hoovers. Hilarious, inventive and very down-to-earth without being overly coarse – we really enjoyed his act and I’d be very happy to see him again.

Headlining were The Noise Next Door, an improv act whom we saw at the Leicester Comedy Festival last year when Johnny Vegas just about gave them enough time to do a bit of their act before the theatre had to close up for the night. They seek ideas and examples from the audience and then incorporate them into comedy songs and sketches – and their brains work in amazing ways! They do a great sequence where they speak alternate words (or even letters) in a foreign accent: this time it was Hungarians explaining antidisestablishmentarianism. Constantly surprising us with their improv skills it’s a great act – and I even bought a t-shirt afterwards.