Beating the alarm

From the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe

More Seann Walsh videos

Winner of the Leicester Comedy Festival comedian of the year competition in 2009, and runner-up in the So You Think You're Funny? new act competition, 2008.

Nominated for the breakthrough award in the 2010 Chortle Awards.

Seann Walsh: Ying & Young
Live Review

We get an unflattering image of Seann Walsh’s life from his second Edinburgh hour. He spends a lot of the time affecting the demeanour of a drunken derelict stumbling through life, and much of the rest describing how utterly lazy he is.

We’ve all been there of course – that’s the universal appeal of his brand of observational stand-up – but Walsh seems to live it more than most; perhaps explaining why he looks much older than his twentysomething years, with an almost constant look of someone who’s just been woken up and isn’t sure where he is.

Yet that deceptive youth means his material has a particularly contemporary feel. For him, nostalgia is early Mortal Kombat and Sonic The Hedgehog. He can see the inconvenience of pre-digital TV that even just slightly older folk would just accept as the way things were. But as Walsh acts out the palaver of tuning your set to your video recorder – video recorder! – the stupid inefficiency of the process is wittily revealed.

But he’s so modern, his material tackles such concerns as the correct way to curl around a laptop to passively watch a film, again demonstrating showing his usual level of activity.

Yet there’s a downside to youth: he clearly doesn’t remember the late-night ITV show of the early Nineties, Get Stuffed!, as it was pretty much the cookery show for drunks that he wishes existed for people like him.

As with any observational stand-up; there’s a fine distinction between material that we can all identify with, and simply describing the over-familiar. Much of Walsh’s inspiration seems fresh, although a couple of routines – in particular those about sending the cashier for items at late-night garages and the art of surreptitiously using the toilet at a stranger’s house – do feel like well-trodden ground. And if his comments about people who can sleep on the train when he can’t even nod off with the slightest distraction seems familiar – well, that’s because he did in his debut last year, so docked points for that.

Mainstream comedy in this genre is much harder than it looks (for all his detractors there is a very good reason why Michael McIntrye is so successful) yet Walsh has a pretty good strike rate. He’s not reinventing the wheel… but he is making humorously astute comments about its spokes.

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I think he's very indicative of the state of stand up in britain at the moment' dull unoriginal and slow witted.

Matt, January 2012

Was him at Norwich Playhouse one of the best acts I've seen, very funny. If you get the chance to see him GO

James, December 2011

I was at your gig at the glee club in Birmingham, i got the mrs to come along, It was the first comedy gig she'd been too and said she loved it, and we both thought it was hilarious. Great night, so thanx

Jonathan garratt, October 2011

Adds nothing to the comedy circuit. People will forget him in 5 years time. Move along, nothing to see here.

Insomniac Jack, July 2011

Just come back from Norden Farm. Sean was a brilliant support act for Stephen K Amos. Really funny.

Colleen, January 2011

Twice now I have paid to see Walsh at comedy gigs, and twice he has failed to show. as his ego got too big already?!

pat, December 2010

The best opening act I've seen in High Wycombe for a while. Loved it.

Paul Roff, November 2010

Just seen Seann for the first time on the 5 O'Clock show with Fern Britton, funny man, wanna see him live now, had me laughing in ym frontroom..

katie mazzeo, July 2010

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