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2010:Nominated for best headliner in the Chortle Awards. 2007: Nominated for best headliner in the Chortle Awards 2006: Appeared as the producer in Rob Brydon's BBC Three series Annually Retentive 2005: Appeared in BBC Two's Broken News, as camp showbiz reporter Josh Cashman on this BBC2 spoof 2003: Chortle Award nominee for best headliner 2002: Nominated for the Perrier for his Edinburgh show: Things I Like, I Lick 2002: Chortle award nominee for best male circuit comic 2002: Appeared as Philip Salon in the Boy George musical Taboo in the West End

Phil Nichol: Welcome To Crazytown
Live Review

Phil Nichol’s evocative recreation of a 1974 Baltimore jazz cellar is so authentic that you’d swear the low-ceilinged Stand was blanketed in fug of cigarette smoke, ban or no ban.

The conceit is that we are in Bertha’s club, witnessing the only performance of beat poet Bobby Spade’s seminal piece Welcome To Crazytown, a dark journey through Denial Park, Anger Freeway and BigLove Prison, written after the death of his wife Tamara. A three-piece band, The Keroasacians, provides suitably seedy mood music to match his gloomy stream of consciousness.

It’s a genre-defying hour all right: part music, part comedy, part spoken word, part theatre. But that also means that the other elements obscure the gags, so punhclines sneak past while you’re basking in the ambience. The deliberately poor puns get bigger laughs than nifty writing within the poetry because they break that atmosphere, so release the tension.

The ghost of Edgar Allan Poe is evoked, not just a character in his dark tale, but in a style of writing that also conjures with images from film noir, gonzo writing and outright surrealism, such as the image of the human calendar. Chuck into the already rich mix a Billie Holliday impression, audience interaction, impressively over-the-top set pieces such as Shitty Christmas and a bloody denouement (unfortunately given away in the introduction) and you have a lot going on.

Powering through all this, Nichol’s performance is as intense as we’ve come to expect, by turn brooding and downbeat before exploding in a spitting, pounding blast of psychotic anger. Then, in an instant, he’ll be back to normal, bantering with the band, or emoting his verses.

Everything about this production booms class, and yet, and yet… laughter is hard to come by, the jokes buried under all the trappings of the show. That everything else is so right but the comedy costs it a star; but Welcome To Crazytown is still an all-enveloping slice of impressive, stylish entertainment.

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Just got back from seeing Phil at The Comedy Store. Brilliant. Had the whole audience shrieking with laughter, got a member of the audience up to sing a song with him, and had the rest of us (British people!) singing along with gusto. Loved it.

Rosie, November 2011

Phil Nichol is the man. He's funny, exciting, awesome, and doesn't give a f**k. He rocks the stage like no other. You need to see him to believe it.

Swamp Thing, January 2011

Gigged for me at the weekend in Newcastle, encored Friday after following Reg D Hunter and Steve Hughes who dropped in to try some new bits, was encored twice with a very different set on Saturday... think they could have listened for another hour if the venue wasn't closing for the night... made a mass of fans this weekend and can't wait to get him back

John S, November 2010

Saw Phil Nichol doing work-in-progress in Greenwich on Sunday. I was exhausted by the end of it, and not in a good way. He was projecting a lot of anxiety and tension into the audience and it made for a very unenjoyable evening. The only laugh he got was when he dealt with a mildly amusing heckler by humiliating her in a rather aggressive and uncreative way. Charisma and charm was sadly lacking.

Oe, June 2010

What Zach Galifianakis does with ease and a welcome of laughter, Nichol expends sweat and blood trying to mine one titter from. Nichol's biggest fan is very obviously Phil Nichol and this alienates the audience almost as soon as he gets on the stage. He's missing that particular MSG that made look-at-me-ism palatable in the acts of Robin Williams and Steve Martin. Grim, with a very obvious contempt for his audience.

Mandy Allan, January 2010

Lawks-a-Lawdy. Saw this clown last night. I can't even describe how bad this guy is. Not just bad - but criminally bad. Cringe-worthy bad. So bad it makes you want to hit people.

Jamie Baxter, August 2009

I've seen Phil on and off over the last few years I guess 10 times and last night I just didn't enjoy his new show, I'm not saying it's no good, just it's very different from the stuff he normally does and just didnt work for me.

Chris, July 2009

Saw his new stuff for Edinburgh and it he looks like a man trying too hard to be funny to me.

David, July 2009

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