Comedy Store May 09

More Geoff Norcott videos

Geoff Norcott Is Good In A Crisis
Live Review
Brighton The Temple

You would never particularly mark Geoff Norcott out as an edgy comedian; with confident affability he wants his audience to feel secure in their entertainment. He’s a safe pair of hands on the circuit, and if it wasn’t such a loaded word, you might dare to call him mainstream.

Yet there’s some delicious gallows humour in this work-in-progress hour, not diminished by the fact it’s delivered with an open smile rather than with a rock-and-roll posturing. It means he can sneak in surprising material about appalling pet deaths or an horrific self-inflicted drug-induced injury without losing his lightness of touch.

This show is another ‘dead parent’ story, following in the footsteps of Des Bishop, Russell Kane, Jason Cook and others who created an unintentional trend for turning grief into gags. Norcott acknowledges he’s not the first to tread this ground – if anything he’s a bit too quick to cite other comedians’ influences – though he has taken a slightly different approach here.

While there are some entertaining examples of his wheelchair-bound mother’s mordant wit, Norcott does not go for pathos particularly. Instead, it’s his personal tale of how grief affected him, and how he dealt with it. Initially, this mean ploughing on regardless, performing at the Edinburgh Fringe night after night, but the denial caused him emotional and physical pain, which he was eventually forced to confront.

He got help from a range of therapists. Oh, and God. For Norcott’s a practising Christian, and while you might take issue with his arguments when he, briefly, addresses this issue – it is at least something different in the Godless world of comedy. Not that you should mistake his faith for piety, he can still be as crude as they come.

As a show, it needs some work on its structure and direction, and some digressions knock the edge off stories… but this is a very early public outing of something bound for Edinburgh not this August, but next. And it surely won’t take 14-and-a-half months to arrange the solid, pieces of his jigsaw into a meaningful and funny whole. Talk about good grief.

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Saw him at the showcase last night in Coventry....was the funniest by far...His skills at handling cretinous drunken audience members were utilised to great effect. I definitely want to see more.

Matt, September 2010

Lovely Geoff is now a LOT better than this review suggests. He's top quality , both his material and his audience skills are superb. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Paul Sinha, May 2008

Absolutely brilliant, funny, caring, even as a small boy he kept the room laughing, but I do have a bias - I'm his mum. Even so, he is brilliantly funny.

Mum, November 2007

Very very very (did I say very?) good. As a first time comedy night organiser I wanted a headliner I could trust. Having seen Geoff perform before I simply had to get him on board. He didn't let me down.

Ryan Chapman, May 2007

Geoff has performed at Bistro L!VE venues three times now and on each occassion has gone down a storm. The audiences at our venues are never the easiest to win over but he does so with ease.

Richard Herrington, October 2006

Ive seen Geoff a couple of times recently and he was fantastic. There was one gig which I thought would be unplayable but he went on and ripped it up good style. Fantastic stuff, one of the good guys one the circuit.

Barry Dodds, October 2006

Saw him last night in Cambridge and laughed all night, he's a naturally funny bloke with a lot of intelligent stuff to say. He had a total wanker in the front row who kept heckling him for no apparent reason but he dealt with him well and had a hilarious off the cuff put down for every moronic comment the idiot came out with.

Nik, August 2006

Appeared at The Walnut Tree Maidstone last night, confident, loud and fresh. Appeared to get bogged down with the weird hecklers but he dealt with them beautifully, loved the sponteneity

Graham Fearon, January 2006

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