Life Of Si: Si Harder
Live Review

Like some kind of meta-sketch comedy, in which almost nothing original can be identified – including the familiar interaction between the two grinning buffoons at its heart – Life of Si is a curious draw that’s sporadically amusing enough to entertain.

Alternating between live recreation of life in their flat and staged, video footage of their flat life, real-life flatmates Simon Feilder and Sy Thomas suck you into a blokey existence from which there’s no escape. Slightly too old to be playing these avatars of credible T4 presenters, a fact they grudgingly acknowledge, they nevertheless possess the requisite haircuts and indie T-shirts, their matey banter just that bit too scripted to feel natural.

The incestuous nature of the show is intensified with a speedy recap of their 2009 debut, an admittedly effective homage to the 24 title sequences in which the pair prostrate themselves in dramatic poses before a projector while a stopclock ticks away. If there’s a through-line from that hour to the denouement of this year’s larking, it’s that they’ve misplaced their novelty teapot Alan. There truly isn’t any more to it than that.

There are some reasonable ideas here: the pair’s status as stand-up journeymen sent up with a series of damningly indifferent quotes from more established comics. Feilder lying prostrate beneath Thomas as the latter chomps into a hefty sandwich, picking up morsels as titbits rain down on him is a surreal sequence worthy of Harry Hill. And witnessing Thomas’s face fall after a series of heckles from Feilder that finally land too close to the bone is a delight.

Elsewhere, though, they lean too heavily on the innate humour of two overgrown adolescents sharing a confined space for seemingly all eternity. There’s a fine line between eliciting comedy from boredom and simply being boring, and Life of Si are only just pitching the right side of that for now.

Amazingly enegergetic and on his way up

Tom, November 2003

Yes, Mr. Feilder is a lively little thing indeed. Impressed me the first time I saw him. Definitely one of the new boys to keep a mince pie on.

Nik Coppin, June 2003