Where The Wild Things Aren't

From Live At The Apollo

More Danny Bhoy videos

Born in the Scottish spa town of Moffat, Danny Bhoy began stand-up in 1998, soon after completing a history degree. He said he caught the comedy bug after walking past an Edinburgh pub and hearing a commotion inside. He discovered it was an open-mic comedy night in progress, and from then he was hooked.

Within his first year, he won The Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award, and in 2000 performed as part of The Comedy Zone showcase of up-and-coming stand-up talent at the Edinburgh Fringe. The following year, he performed his first solo show at the festival, and has returned every year since, except 2007.

He has also become a regular at several international festivals. He made his debut at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in 2003 and in 2005, he was invited to both Montreal's Just For Laughs Comedy Festival and the inaugural Las Vegas Comedy Festival. He returned to the Montreal festival in 2007, where he was given the rare chance to perform a ten-night solo run, and that year he also embarked on his first major tour of Australia, with 94 dates. He now spends half the year in Australia.

Sean Lock etc at the Greenwich Comedy Festival
Live Review
Old Royal Naval College

The Greenwich Comedy Festival seems to get bigger each year – and not just metaphorically. The week-long event kicked off on Friday and has already featured comedians of the calibre of Milton Jones, Mark Watson and Stephen K Amos – but the size of the marquee needed to accommodate the audience for such a stellar line-up is vast. Any bigger and it might envelop the historic Old Royal Naval College in whose grounds it sits.

Last night’s headliner was the always-impressive Sean Lock, living up to his persistent persona of the bloke down the pub talking bollocks. ‘I’m a bit of a character,’ he explains… and we all know what that means.

He kicked off with some topical material about the ‘Lympics’, using the G4S shambles as a springboard into a preposterously silly routine which vividly evoked cartoon-like images of him negotiating security with nothing to declare. Yet he seems so normal – not so obviously ‘wacky’ like some of his stand-up contemporaries – which makes the oddness all the more potent.

That was most evident in his routine about ballet, which he recreated by clomping around the stage with the grace and fluidity of an asthmatic warthog. And not just for a moment, he extends the scene well beyond the point when the original gag ceased to be funny – but repeat something for long enough and it gets the laughs again.

In more conventional conversational segments, he proved why he’s no fit person to be a parent, a politician, or an anger management counsellor in one original, offbeat routine after another. It was a sterling, eccentric performance which proved why Lock is the Lidl sat-nav of comedy: always taking you in unexpected directions.

Opening the night was Danny Bhoy, with a much more conventional approach to observational stand-up, giving voice to sort of concerns we’ve all noticed: Why is printer ink so ridiculously expensive? Haven’t irresponsible banks got a cheek charging us for going a bit overdrawn? What ARE the seven signs of ageing?

Compared to the virtuoso frustrated rants of the righteously indignant Rhod Gilbert on similar matters of consumer marketing claptrap, Bhoy is more restrained – and the gags more obvious. Nonetheless he strikes a chord with the audience, bolstered by his powerful yet easy charm and acute sense of comic timing.

His device of framing his grumbles as letters of complaint to the corporations, like so many Henry Root-style books, gives the routine a distinctive cadence, and allows his smartarse comments to drop more gently, but with more effect. At times, he’s rather old-fashioned – coyly describing an argument without actually using the swear words involved, for example – but then he has always been the sort of broadly accessible act your granny could enjoy.

Compere was Ed Gamble, full of boyish cheekiness to tease the City bankers in the front section without vilification, and deal with the simplest, if not the quietest, of heckles – ‘Your haircut isn’t very good’ – from the laddier parts at the back.

But star of the night was surely Tony Law, who stormed the shortish middle section with his self-conscious surrealism and booming insanity. Fresh from Latitude – if anyone can be ‘fresh’ from that festival – he mocked the canvas-walled venue before teasing himself for turning up with such rocky, ill-thought-through ideas as his elephant-based pub joke.

The running commentary and desperate struggles to find a way out of the holes he digs for himself exposes the artifice of more traditional stand-up sets and stirs up the complacency of the genre. The joke’s always on him, whether on the poor pre-gig planning he professes to have done, or the less-than believable claims to be a ‘Danger Dog’, ignoring The Man when it comes to such constricting rules as putting a lid on your coffee.

And should he end up down a comedy cul-de-sac, randomly inserted non-sequiturs such as the inexplicable mimicking of a tug-boat horn always give him a way out.

Paaaaarp!

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Hilarious. Deserves mega-stardom

della, June 2011

Ditto, I thought he was a little put out by the small crowd at the Palace Theatre. I agree with the review as well, not spectacularly split-my-sides funny, but engagingly funny.

Danny, September 2010

I saw him last night, and he was great, although he seemed a little shocked that the balconies were empty!

connor, September 2010

Smug, derivative, slick and funny only to untrained ears.

Mandy Allan, January 2010

Have seen Danny twice now and he did new material at the 2nd gig. Got his DVD at Sydney Opera House and will buy his newest one asap. His YouTube page is great too. Bravo!

Julie, July 2009

Saw danny last night in a tiny place in Tunbridge Wells. This obviously unnerved Danny because he kept pausing and pointing out that we weren't getting him and how big he is in Australia. Just because it was a small audience didn't mean we weren't having fun and laughing at him, it just wasn't the huge crowd he's used to. If he had just got past this and realised we were having fun and not patronising him with our quiet clapping it would of been flawless. Chill out with the small crowds, we all love you.

julie, October 2008

went to see DB last night. Normally I am a massive fan but unfortunately yesterday was a wash out. He began his act by asking two audience members to leave which was not received well by the audience. He wasted 10 minutes trying to eject them, a waste of time, not even funny and also extremely obnoxious. He seems to have become a lot more arrogant since last seeing him - yet his run of the mill observational commentary does not justify his attitude. He stumbled through the rest of the performance without really engaging the audience. There was no new material, unfortunately for me... sub-par and not recommended.

Sam, September 2008

Just came back from Leeds City Varieties where, despite there shockingly only being maybe 150 people there (and him apparently being under the weather) he gave a fantastic 90 minute+ show. Definitely one to see again.

Chris, September 2008

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