BBC Comedy On The Fringe 2011

With Isy Suttie

More Charlie Baker videos

Charlie Baker at Latitude 2010
Live Review

Charlie Baker struggled to interest the sparsely populated comedy tent with tired, pedestrian material, but his disproportionate response to the heckler who dared point this out left a worst taste in mouth than the dodgiest festival falafel.

His dull shtick on being a fat bloke, odd stereotypes about him being ‘gay enough’ to eat quiche but man enough to have onion rings with it, and his repeated assertion – without any gags to back it up – that nothing in life is better than taking a shit with the Argos catalogue as reading material was largely met by listless silence.

Then one bloke piped up, out of frustration rather than hate: ‘What you should do in shut up’, and Baker turned. Getting nowhere with his bullying tone urging the dissenter to ‘stand up and say that’, Baker wandered into the crowd and dumped the best part of a pint of cider over the naysayer.

Latitude is so polite such unprofessional behaviour went unchallenged, but it was surely an utterly inappropriate response. Baker should have defeated him with wit, not assault.

It was, at best, a misguided attempt to inject some excitement into the moribund atmosphere – but then Baker also created that in the first place.

In his favour, he does have a very strong singing voice, able to emulate greats like Sinatra, though he only does so to change song lyrics to make them slightly ruder. And singing the jingle of the Bodyform ads has been used as a punchline replacement service since the campaign first appeared in a previous century.

Poor material and an unpleasant streak… not a winning combination.

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Utterly brilliant. He took the roof off. Amazing. A star of the future - no doubt about it. Cecilia 21.11.05

Cecilia, November 2005

Depends what you want from an act, a few weeks ago Charlie did a gig for me at the Guildhall Gloucester, totally entertaining and the crowd loved him, ripped the roof off. Nik Hill 09.11.05

Nik Hill, November 2005

Anyone who uses hack material to get a laugh, should rethink his career, leave the hack jokes to the legends who started them. Barserver 19.10.05

Barserver, October 2005

Saw Charlie a few months back, difficult audience but he handled it well, his material is a bit haphazard but it worked at this gig; strong,confident indivisual who his aware of his somehwat hack material at times but plays on this. Genuine guy, made me laugh and the rest of the crowd. Nik Hill 16.09.05

Nik Hill, September 2005

Saw him at the LSE a couple of months ago and thought it was a brilliant act. Original material and combination of styles, but easy to get into. Can see great things in the future for Charlie. James 07.12.05

James

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