Gavin Webster's Falderal – Fringe 2009
Live Review

‘That’s a great joke, that is,’ Gavin Webster says proudly after his one-liners. ‘I wrote that....’

Indeed there are some great jokes here. About five of them. Much of the rest of the hour is futile, repetitive meandering interspersed with occasional bursts of undercooked surrealism that he makes little attempt to sell to the audience.

It’s such a frustratingly unfocussed jumble of half-cocked ideas and unedited trains of thought that it feels like an early preview rather than the finished produced from a comedian of 17 years experience, more than a week into its festival run.

Falderal, which the foul-mouthed Webster starts to explain but then forgets to, means nonsensical talk – a move presumably designed to set himself apart from all the high-concept shows on Fringe and allow him free range for all manner of stuff and nonsense.

Apart from the smattering of entertainingly punny one-liners, the only routine that feels anywhere near finished is his take on the difference between ‘cunts’, ‘bastards’ and ‘fuckers’ in the language of the working man. Swap the Geordie accent for an Irish one, and this could be Dave Allen speaking.

But otherwise the audience can only watch as promising ideas go down the plughole, most often flushed away with a tide of unnecessarily waffle, over-describing the set-ups with repetitive details. There’s no concept of being economic, but the most frustrating thing is that Webster can write decent jokes, but mostly chooses not to.

A stand-up segment about Liverpudlians challenging authority while Geordies comply but grumble is an interesting regional point, which he fails to drive home; likewise the concept of creating comedy like chemistry, using vials containing the various component elements of a good gag, is intriguing, but stops before it gets going.

For a party piece, he does a few songs in the style of other artists, which again sounds good, but are wasted by a lacklustre delivery. Shaun Ryder doing the Are You Being Served? theme is promising and silly, but he blames the failure of his Mark E Smith impression on the audience not knowing The Fall, but it’s really because of the half-hearted under-performance.

Webster’s better than this, and while he might be happy to sleepwalk through a hour, audiences might want a show that’s actually finished.