14/02/11: Festival of the Spoken Nerd - Upstairs at the Green Man

There’s no denying that Festival of the Spoken Nerd, the monthly comedy night run by Helen Arney, Mat Parker and Steve Mould, has fairly niche appeal, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most delightful comedy nights in London. I had my first experience of it on Valentine’s Day and definitely think it was the best way to have spent my evening.

First things first: it’s not slick. It doesn’t purport to be, it doesn’t want to be, and the tiny top-of-a-pub room it’s held in wouldn’t allow it to be if it did. From the projector being held in place by condiments to Arney forgetting which way round to introduce Mould and Parker, it really is quite a ramshackle night, but what it lacks in immaculate organisation it makes up for with charm, friendliness and some really funny jokes involving graphs. Helen Arney’s beautiful, nerdy songs – old and new – pepper the show in between sections from regulars Parker and Mould (this month: evolutionary biology and sexy shapes), as well as guest contributions in the form of sexologist confessions from Dr Glenn Wilson and a headline set from the absolute must-see that is stand-up Sara Pascoe. The eclectic mix means there really is something for everyone, no matter what level of nerd you are.

What really makes it is the audience, however. The small venue allows for a cosy atmosphere – possibly the cosiest I’ve ever been a part of, gig-wise – and participation is encouraged in the form of experiments and time for questions at the end of each section, even if they’re not strictly related. It feels more like a Geekoholics Anonymous meeting than a comedy night at times (which is a good thing, I hasten to add).

FOTSN isn’t aiming to poke fun at anything – it’s just a celebration of all things nerd; a comedy night with a difference that’ll ‘make ya think’ whilst making your cheeks ache with laughter at the same time.

Festival of the Spoken Nerd is on monthly at the Green Man, Riding House Street, London. Click here to book tickets and find details about future line-ups.

08/02/11: Kevin Eldon is Titting About - Soho Theatre

The Actor Kevin Eldon is a face a lot of people are used to by now, even if they have no idea why: he's like a subliminal message, except not. His CV is ridiculous - Smack the Pony, Fist of Fun, Brass Eye, Spaced, Black Books and so much more - and rightly so, because he is an unspeakably good actor. It turns out, however, that he is also an amazing stand-up, as he proved when he took his first ever one-man show to the Edinburgh Fringe last year. It's currently enjoying a long run at London's Soho Theatre, which I'm very grateful for since I've finally had the chance to see why this show was the talk of the (Scottish) town last August.

And, oh, what a show it was.

You are primarily just watching Eldon mess about on a stage for fifty minutes, of course, and he does it in such a way that he fools you into thinking everything you're seeing is spontaneous and simple, but it's not. Underneath the bubbly, bouncy surface of Eldon's world of obnoxious characters and babbling is clearly something very well-crafted and carefully-observed, and his attention to detail and timing is stunning.

Mostly playing "himself" while dipping between different characters such as poet Paul Hamilton, an arrogant Frenchman who can't speak English and a pension salesman with a heroin addiction, he talks about his process for coming up with the show, rips the shit out of all manner of comedy and theatre clichés, and sings a couple of hilarious songs as well. He's managed to pack so much into just fifty minutes that sometimes even he can't seem to keep up with himself.

Even though there's a lot of mockery and irritation in his material, particularly on the subject of the upward inflection, it's primarily a very joy-filled show. This is intensified by just how much he is visibly enjoying himself on stage; it's infectious.

There's so much to take in that it's impossible to pick a favourite moment or say much more without this getting much longer and more gushing than it already is. I will say one more thing, though: the show is an absolutely must-see for anyone with even a passing interest in comedy. Go. Go now.

Kevin Eldon is Titting About is on at the Soho Theatre until 19 February 2011. View details and book tickets here.

Hello again.

Remember what I said about my initial, ambitious beginnings last August?

No. No, you don't, and that's precisely the point. I intended for this to contain semi-regular reviews and opinion posts about UK comedy, but instead of DOING that I ran away and hid for a few months while giving you the silent treatment. Sorry. I promise it's me that's the problem, not you.

I remembered to come back to this after I realised I could hear my bank account whimpering and begging for mercy. You see, live comedy recently woke up again, and while trying to put it all in my face on a very low budget I've found myself inspired to write about it. Which is nice. So look forward to some actual proper posts about stuffs and thing very soon.

Edinburgh Season.

I apologise for a lack of activity in spite of my initial, ambitious beginnings. It has been a busy time for me. It has also been a busy time for comedy, you see, what with it being Edinburgh season and all; everyone has been rushing to do previews of their material to make sure the people who pay proper money to see them up in Scotland actually, um, laugh - and I have been rushing to see them. It's okay to fuck up down in London around this time: in late July, it's simply the done thing. And anyway, I rather enjoy being able to witness the creative process as an audience member - I'm sure it's far less tiring than if you're, say, the partner or a close friend of a comedian, or if you're the comedian yourself.

And yet, as the preview audience - as mere strangers, looming menacingly in the rows of seats a comic is faced with nightly, our judging faces mercifully untouched by the glaring stage lights -, our lazy contribution is valued beyond belief. We are the funny gauge - our only job is to laugh or otherwise forever hold our peace. We're important - we can inform a comedian about where some material needs tidying and cutting, and where some needs to be fleshed out; where the big laughs are, and whether things are heading the right direction generally. Helping professional comedians create their final Edinburgh shows is as satisfying as seeing the final shows themselves.

Another major bonus is that previews tend to be dirt cheap, so even if the show you paid to see wasn't at its funniest, it's not like you wasted much money. For various reasons, I only attended three actual previews this year (Gutted, Daniel Kitson and WitTank), but I don't mind this too much because I have seen various others do new bits and bobs at other comedy nights, and because of the Camden Fringe. I used to get incredibly bitter about the fact that I will not be able to attend the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for several years yet, but now I know that is a foolish, selfish way to feel. Yes, live comedy in London dries up slightly during the summer, but we've got it to ourselves for the rest of the year - a perfectly fair trade, in my opinion.

Coming soon: actual posts about live comedy, featuring WitTank, Andrew Williams, gushing about my favourite London comedy night and various acts at the Camden Fringe this year.

"A contraceptive misadventure."

(Copied from another blog. Let's get the ball rolling with a bit of a general post.)

Yesterday morning, I got up early to see two editions of Rufus Hound's Teenage Diaries being recorded at the Drill Hall. Sheila Hancock read from the diary she'd kept during her six-week holiday in France as a fourteen year old girl, telling us about some incredibly life-changing moments which I found rather heart-warming. Victoria Coren then told us about her teenage obsessions with boys and her weight, as well as the strange way in which she, at the time, dismissed the media career of her adolescence as commonplace and boring. I think if I'd known the teenage Victoria Coren, I'd've fucking loathed her, but I would have probably still tried it on with her.

Much later on in the day, I trundled off to Battersea Arts Centre to see a preview of Daniel Kitson's Edinburgh show, "It's Always Right Now Until It's Later". It was, in a word, mind-blowing. I have no idea what I thought Kitson would be like (this was my first time seeing him perform), but I'm glad I approached him with a mind empty of expectations or I might have been disappointed.

If you're planning on seeing Kitson's Edinburgh show at some point and don't want to be 'spoiled', I suggest you scroll to the end of this post, where I start talking vaguely about some telly.


With this show, he was taking a story-telling approach, but it wasn't really comedy. It wasn't a funny story; it was a story with some jokes. I got the feeling that his main aim really wasn't to make everyone piss themselves with laughter.

Let me try to explain. In this show, he tells the stories of two people, and the only way in which they are in any way connected is by one, insignificant moment where they brushed each other on a bus. The show is about, well, life: how even the most insignificant of events can mean something to someone, even if in the grand scheme of things it means absolutely nothing. Obviously, what with it being a preview (he'd told us he only finished writing the show yesterday morning), it was a bit messy in places where he forgot his words or ran out of steam and had to consult his script. Having said that, it was still marvellously, cleverly put together - cross-cutting between the two timelines with seemingly-irrelevant but interesting tangents - and I'm sure that when he finally can deliver it properly for Edinburgh it will be much less of a slog.

A note on the set, which I fucking adored: the stage was completely plain expect for the several light-bulbs hanging from the ceiling at various heights. They were all lit throughout the show, but whenever Kitson zoned in on a particular moment (he told the stories by jumping back and forth between the timelines of each character, jumping backwards and forwards in their lives, focusing on a different, important moment with every scene change to paint clearer pictures of these people), one particular light-blub would shine brighter to symbolise said moment's sudden significance. When he wasn't sitting on the chair, reading from the script the bits he couldn't quite deliver from memory, he would walk to the part of the stage with the brightest light-blub and talk at it, like a comedian might talk to an audience member in the front row.

If you're seeing him in Edinburgh, you will not be disappointed, but you may leave the venue with the feeling I had last night - a sort of heavy melancholy I couldn't really understand. The show makes you think.

'Spoilers' end here.


Today I have a day-off from live comedy, so I've had the chance to catch up on Monday's Rev and yesterday's That Mitchell & Webb Look.

A note on the former: I think it is becoming one of my favourite sitcoms of all time. It's definitely not laugh-out-loud funny, but that's because it doesn't want to be. Instead, it's cosy, and it's sweet, and the characters seem like real people with real lives (as opposed to the larger-than-life types typical of, say, The Vicar of Dibley). It's wonderful.

A note on the latter: do you remember Series 3, boys? Do you? What happened? Why have you gone back to being of a similar quality to the first two serieseseseses? Obviously I'm adoring the After the Event sketches, and this week's final sketch (once it stopped being a little boring) was delightfully bleak, but the rest of it was just a bit 'meh'. Why are you still running with Hennimore? And why did you use a red button sketch from a previous week in this week's show? I don't understand.