Paul Dennis: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Laughing Horse @ The Free Sisters

In what looks like the janitor’s closet, next to the toilets in the Three Sisters pub, Paul Dennis is probably not going to be on many punters’ radars… nor, to be honest, does it need to be.

This is very obviously a newish comedian proving to himself as much as anyone that he can talk for an hour. Indeed, he’s decent company and can easily hold the one-sided conversation for that time.

But a large proportion of it is just that; a bit of relatively amusing chat but – save for maybe 15 minutes or so  – not formed into sold stand-up bits with real punchlines and laugh points.

He starts with the obligatory mention of what he looks like: Fat, (but not as much as he used to be thanks to Atkins and abstinence from booze) and in his 40s, though looking older (possibly due to his previous lack of abstinence from booze).

More interestingly, he’s from Basingstoke. And that’s not a sentence you hear very often, but he has some original twists on the  ‘crap town’ staple, via meaningless corporate council slogans and the real reasons there are so many mini-roundabouts there.

The title,  Inappropriate Bits, suggests something a little bit dark; but although Dennis is rude, especially for 4.30pm, because most of the stories are first-hand, it doesn’t seem unnecessarily grubby for an adult crowd. That said, he doesn’t add a great deal to the body of stand-up on vajazzling and blow-jobs.

He doesn’t have much of a story about being in New York on 9/11, either – though acknowledges the fact and tries to imagine something more exciting; though it’s a flight of fantasy too far. This, and a couple of other longer routines, demonstrate a certain Welsh lyricism to the storytelling, but he needs to drop into his routines a few more solid laugh points – not just wry comments and engineered callbacks – to elevate them from the conversational into stand-up.

He ends with a couple of songs with his guitar, including a very lazy lyrical rewrite of a pop hit to make it rude. But it guarantees the applause and is some sort of conclusion for a show that’s more a stepping stone in his personal development than a treat for the audience, likeable though he is.