Mark Watson - Live Review

There’s not many acts who, after playing the Hammersmith Apollo, tell the 2,000 or so members of the audience: ‘If you’ve enjoyed this, you’ve got every chance of becoming my actual friend’.

But Mark Watson’s gift is to be such a natural on stage all concern for the artificial dynamics of stand-up are blown away. It’s become something of a cliché to say of a comedian ‘it’s like chatting to your mate in the pub’, but Watson’s loose approach - commenting on his performance, interrupting his own stories and getting tied up in the moment - genuinely gives that impression, even here, at the biggest gig of his career so far.

There is a trade-off to this casual approach, however, in that it’s more difficult to build a sense of occasion. It’s hard to be wowed by spectacle when the backdrop is a PowerPoint slide Watson has put up without setting the display to full screen. And so inconsequential are some digressions, such as trying to guess which cities foreign audience members are from, that they barely qualify as stand-up. But while Watson might not do much, he does it very well.

Plus, of course, with such a lax form, Watson can employ his favourite tool: self-doubt. As many laughs come from him worrying about whether he’s slick and confident enough as a comedian as from him fretting whether he amounts to enough as a human, which is the (suitably) vague theme of the show.

Do I Know You? refers to the level of fame he has, with people hazily recognising him from the occasional panel show appearance, some off-peak TV and those Magners Pear cider adverts. His worries over whether he was right to taking the corporate shilling seem real enough, but his assertion that ‘I don’t think I’ll stoop that low again’ is only a joke: He’s done Innocent smoothies and he’s playing second fiddle in an IAMS advert to come…

The first half of this show is particularly casual (‘to soften you up,’ Watson tells the room) as he largely fannies around, trying to make something of the streams of latecomers and those heading for the toilets. I don’t think he’s making them literally piss themselves, just that the audience seem particularly weak bladdered tonight. It’s affable badinage, but not particularly sharp, and we must wait until after the interval for the meat of the show.

Thereafter, poceedings are a lot more focused; as he gets down to business with more hardened, easily identifiable routines about such things as the phrase ‘that took balls’ or observational segments about odd sneezes, all linked to a broad theme about the conventions of social interaction. That extends to his own fears about becoming a dad – not exactly original territory for a comedian, but Watson’s incisive self-deprecation and unaffected honesty give it a distinctive feel.

He’s also got a playful streak, whether in his extreme solution to his sock-drawer problems, or for his reason why he couldn’t be trusted to be the leader of the free world.

Although these routines are well-practised, Watson still makes them feel slightly unpolished, for better or for worse. Now and again a routine could do with being sharpened up, but the relaxed approach underlines his vulnerabilities, which he accepts with genial wit. No wonder you feel like you’ve made a friend…

Jason Manford - Live Review

The heckles began before Jason Manford had even removed his microphone from its stand. ‘You dirty bastard!’ boomed across the Hammersmith Apollo.

The front-page revelations that caused him to quit the One Show just days ago made such interruptions inevitable, and Manford came prepared with his putdown: ‘Literally nothing you can say can possibly embarrass me more than last week, when seven million people essentially caught me wanking – it's bad enough when your mum walks in.’

But it was only partially successful in defusing the tension, and Manford had to turn off his Mr Nice Guy persona to warn anyone else who tried anything that he would ‘make you cry in front of your mates’. Yet still they came.

Later, when he began a set-up with ‘There's this product that's quite dangerous...’ one punter interrupted with perfect timing: ‘Twitter!’

Not a bad quip, but Manford was having none of it, resorting to headmasters’ trick of asking the culprit to repeat it to the whole room, once the moment has passed. It is the comedian’s antagonistic equivalent of taunting someone to ‘come over here and say that’ – a stance further highlighted when he asked for the house lights to come up, saying it was all-too easy to heckle from the darkness. All very awkward, and sensibly the lighting desk chose to ignore him.

In Manford’s defence, however, most of the interjections were devoid of wit, just the loutish shouting out of random words connected to the story. Manford clearly wasn’t too comfortable with it – he’s no Russell Brand revelling in notoriety – but he fronted it out.

Alhough you shouldn’t expect him to pop up on prime-time TV anytime soon, it’s unlikely the tabloid stories will derail Manford’s stand-up career – as this week’s announcement of a raft of arena dates testify.

What might be more subtly damaging is if Manford has to play the tough guy too often to control the hecklers. His career has been built on the persona of the warm, affable, chipper Northern, a fan of the cheeky wind-up, but never harsh or offensive. That can be hard to pull off when you’re slapping down relentless heckles with thinly veiled aggression, rather than charm, but maybe this will ease once the hurt is less raw.

For the vast majority of the show, however, Manford managed to make us forget his high-profile transgressions – even though stories of being caught watching porn as a teenager or about the Twitter joke trial accidentally trigger reminders of what got him into trouble.

Largely, though, this was 90 or so minutes of typically accessible, easy-going humour from an affable, fallible Everyman. Observations about sat navs, changing nappies, supermarket checkouts and just what is the deal with women buying all those beauty products are never going to be ambitious, but they strike a chord and Manford handles them deftly.

He’s got an ear for a nifty turn of phrase and the attention to detail in the asides adds appealing garnish. That’s not to say he hasn’t got some nice gags – a line about his parents’ 35th anniversary was a particular stand-out – although he’s on shakier ground with his malapropisms. Having his mother say ‘I’m just going into town, want anything from HIV?’ are too close to Peter Kay’s material, just when Manford was starting to avoid comparisons with his near-neighbour.

When he doesn’t need to bare his teeth at hecklers, Manford retains an affably joival demeanour that makes him warmly enjoyable company. That alone should act as an effective umbrella as he walks boldly through the tabloid shitstorm.

Kevin Bridges - Live Review

Kevin Bridges is the comic who struck lucky. In many ways, his affable telling of personal yarns and everyday observations is the stuff of many a comedian working the clubs, rather than touring Britain’s biggest No 1 theatres.

Strong management has certainly helped propel him to this elevated status at the ripe old age of 23, but his compelling Everyman appeal is all his own. He’s a natural on stage, effortlessly friendly but with a glint of Clydebank grit to add character, without ever straying close to the line of genuine cruelty or offence, a smattering of heartfelt Anglo-Saxon expletives aside.

English people, he claims, can find his accent impenetrable; whereas his old Scottish mates think he’s gone all la-di-da. His accent is, however, a great asset, even something as simple as putting and an extra, heavily stressed, syllable into a word like ‘toddler’ has a charm of its own.

He’s certainly not shy about milking his nation’s stereotypes, boasting of Glasgow’s appalling record on health, hardman reputation, and dogged lack of pretension, which is a source of great pride. It’s the stuff of many a stand-up routine, admittedly, and other topics such as the disappearing joy of finding pornography stashed in a hedge, the perils of a budget airline flight from Glasgow to Majorca, raucous groups of fat girls in hired limousines, are in equally familiar territory.

But even when the material verges on the obvious Bridges can be counted on to do it nicely, with a perfect summary of the situations he’s describing or an admirably wry turn of phrase – or simply because he connects so innately with his audience on a level few comics do, let alone one of his relative youth.

A particularly amusing interlude has him highlight the ridiculousness of a young comic doing Peter Kay-style reminiscences – ‘Remember when PlayStations used to have controllers with wires? What’s all that about?’ – but largely you forget about his age, given that he looks so much older than his years, and is so comfortable in himself and his comedy.

His writing still has some way to go to catch up with the irresistible stage presence, but Bridge’s stories suggest he has his feet firmly on the ground, despite his rapid ascent, while his no-frills material seems to be slowly evolving over this tour. A few recent favourites, such as his description of an empty-house party, are missing from tonight’s 70-minute set, although he still includes such reliable laugh-generators as the story of him watching his dad furtively tune to the free porn preview in the early days of Sky TV.

Bridges continues to be an assuredly solid stand-up, with enough delightful moments to pique the interest; though will still await the breakthrough into consistently more interesting material.

Al Murray - Live Review

When Al Murray first donned his burgundy blazer in 1994, he could have had no idea that the Pub Landlord character would be going strong 16 years later, with half a dozen DVDs, three series of an ITV chat show and 37 sitcom episodes among the career highlights.

But it probably gets no easier. How to keep the caricature fresh for those who have watched his progress, without affecting the elements made him such a success? And how to maintain a sense of occasion for each new batch of tour dates.

In this Barrel Of Fun show, which was being recorded in London for DVD, Murray’s tinkered a little with the winning formula – but still couldn’t reach the highs of the pig-headed Guv at his intoxicating best.

Compared to his unsubtle gig at the O2 Arena last year, he toned down the rabble-rousing for the more intimate confines of the Hammersmith Apollo, though still persuaded the audience to join in gleefully with a few new choice phrases, like an overbearing playgroup leader. And though there were a few obligatory jibes at the French and the Germans, his biggest bugbear this year is the far-from-contentious squirrel. Hell, Murray even stood up for one much-ridiculed minority – the gingers, turning the old gags on their copper heads. It’s political correctness gone mad, I tell you…

This arose in the first chunk of the show, which comprises his superbly sharp banter with the audience, with their ‘beautiful British names’. This often involves portraying them as lazy and feckless workers, merely massaging the uniquely self-deprecating element of the national psyche, while youngsters are teased about their inability to get served at the bar.

As for the bulk of his set, he typically doles out his misguided opinions, constructing elaborate arguments to make his warped case. It means the pace can be slow… taking a good ten minutes of emphatic bluster, constant repetition and forceful audience interaction to construct his perfect chat-up line. It’s all done in a spirit of fun, but when the result is something of a damp squib, it seems a palaver to get there.

It’s similar with his rant about the ex-Nazi Pope, which is pretty standard comedy fare, however much we play along with his ‘bonkers mental’ catchphrase. Talking of standard fare, he also tackles the oldest one in the book: the difference between men and women – though he absolutely nails it with his hilarious description of the genders’ differing emotional landscapes. And you can sense the release when he encourages the men in the room to voice a complaint they’ll all have had about their partners, but daren’t ever have said aloud. ‘This is edgy stuff,’ Murray teases… and it kind of is.

Although the show is built around big set pieces, the convoluted arguments don’t work so well for Murray as the briefer, knowing asides. He may spend ages berating the squirrels, using a sporting audience patsy to make his silly point, but the comedy is sharper when he dismisses cows with one apparently throwaway line.

The Pub Landlord is a beautiful British institution. But like so many beautiful British institutions, he perhaps isn’t quite what he once was; even though he quite clearly has his moments, and a lightning-fast mind with the audience badinage.

• Al Murray: Barrel Of Fun is released on DVD on November 22. Click here to preorder from Amazon

Billy Connolly - Live Review

Billy Connolly has been British comedy’s elder statesman since before the newest of stand-ups were born, so it’s inevitable to ask whether, at 67, he’s ‘still go it’.

The answer is a certain ‘yes’ – with only a very few qualifications.

Age does appear to have affected his short-term memory, with Connolly losing his thread in pretty much every story. But after cursing to himself, he always manages to pick up the train of thought… as well as the occasional story from earlier in the show you’d long assumed he’d abandoned.

It’s all part of his effortless charm, of course. Connolly pioneered the naturalistic form of conversational comedy that still rules today, and the more white he gets in his scraggly mane, the more he fits the persona of the lively, opinionated bar-room ‘character’ dispensing anecdotes and good company.

‘We’re just having a wee conversation,’ he tells the Hammersmith Apollo crowd. ‘But you don’t get to say anything. It’s like talking to your mother…’

Until he hits his stride, the early part of the show is pretty much angry invective, but not much wit, as he rails against his chosen hate-figures with little more than his welder’s vocabulary. It’s all very well calling people ‘wankers’ but it doesn’t take that much skill.

Swearing, though, remains his forte… with only fellow Glaswegian Peter Capaldi’s Thick Of It spin doctor outdoing him in the four-letter stakes. The undoubted highlight of this show is a brilliant routine on the etiquette of dropping the C-bomb, with Connolly finding special delight in its most casual deployment – while berating the Americans for getting it all wrong.

For whatever his chronological age and the trappings of stardom, the Big Yin remains a cheeky 12-year-old at heart, delighting in saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. He’s the sort of man who likes to surreptitiously get his willy out at a twee civic buffet, as he describes in another hilarious routine, while staying playful rather than crude. That seems to be his credo.

Though he’s long sworn off the booze, saloon-bar yarns are never far from the agenda. He has a great running gag about the jelly-legged drunks of Edinburgh’s pub-lined Rose Street, but every story, you feel, should be regaled from a bar stool. True to that spirit, there are a couple of ‘pub gags’ in here, often attributed, accurately or not, to other larger-than life characters such as Jimmy Nail and Frank Carsons.

The use of such second-hand material – as well as the likes of T-shirt slogans – might be frowned upon by purists, but it all forms part of his patchwork of patter. And if you want a tall tale to be told well, get Connolly to tell it – you couldn’t ask for anyone more instinctively funny and irresistibly personable. Even his habit of doubling over in laughter at his own impending hilarity, though initially irritating, is soon forgiven.

And when the ‘grumpy old man’ fury returns for a second attack on politicians – especially David Cameron – he’s found some barbed comments to match the passion, properly skewering the smarmy old Etonian.

At two interval-free hours, this was shorter that some of Connolly earlier bladder-troubling shows – and is all the better for the brevity. It proves that even when distracted, the godfather of modern comedy is a raconteur of considerable standing.

Dara O Briain - Live Review

Dara O Briain has become such a part of the comedy furniture, it’s easy to forget just how innately good he is as a stand-up. Thanks to constant Mock The Week re-runs, it seems there’s never a night he’s not on the telly, and with a tireless commitment to touring, he’s on stage almost as often as he’s on the box.

Tonight at the Hammersmith Apollo is his 109th or 110th night of his current tour – even he loses count. But he’s showing no sign of road-weariness; far from it. Even limbering up with the traditional ‘and what do you do?’ audience banter, he proves he’s as sharp as they come, possibly helped by his encouragement for those in dull jobs to lie, to save us all the tedium of trying to find something interesting to say about their IT projects.

Such ice-breaking badinage often seems redundant in big shows, but O Briain elicits warm, frequent laughs from the apparently effortless ad-libbing. Even when much of the banter revolves around the audience’s apparently useless answers, as it did tonight, he strikes gold consistently.

It comes as a surprise when after just a few minutes of this invigorating chat, he calls the interval. But check your watch: it’s not a few minutes, it’s an hour – so quickly does time fly in his affable company. Although you think he’s barely got into his material, he’s niftily appended some assured routines to the improvised conversations, mainly covering medical experiences, from his sky-high cholesterol that makes him think he has butter for blood, through chiropractors, and on to how first aid courses teach the correct beat to which you should perform CPR. Informative as well as entertaining.

That approach is key to O Briain’s near-universal appeal. He’s not afraid to tackle intelligent subjects as part of the mix, but he never makes it elitist. Yes, you can talk about neutrinos, but do it via the dreadful disaster movie 2012 and everyone will stay on board. The fact there’s a punchline every few seconds helps, too.

He mainly uses his instinctive gift for communication to debunk nonsense. While there’s nothing here quite as masterful as his destruction of homeopathy in the last tour, the midwife at the National Childbirth Trust gave him more than enough new-age nonsense for another classic virtuoso routine. Such baseless superstition, along with everything from the marketing of mouthwash to the Goldilocks story, are all exposed for the bullshit it is, with the deadly precision of a sniper.

That said, the most hilarious section of them all is a simple, but beautifully realised, observational piece about the playing of video games that should reduce anyone who’s ever held a controller to helpless mirth.

Everything is delivered in such a light, conversational style that conceals the cleverness of the routines; a stealth that makes them even more devastating. He happily deconstructs what he’s doing – pointing out the obvious rhythms of a gag or engineering the ‘encore’ – while he’ll happily snap off-script to deal with any eventuality. Tonight, the one audience member not laughing amid the 3,000 who are naturally catches his attention, so there’s a little business to get her on-side, too. No punter left behind, that’s his ethos.

Effortlessly assured, O Briain is the consummate comic; appealing to a broad demographic without playing safe or dumbing down, just being hilarious. That’s not butter flowing through his veins, but pure funny.

Billy Connolly - Live Review

There’s no escaping the fact: at 61, Billy Connolly is officially old. There are comics with grandfathers younger than him; and not just a few, either.

He really needs glasses to read his notes; the material these days will more likely concern a medical procedure than the shameless exploits of a drunken night out; and if, at his age, the mind begins to wander, imagine what that means for Connolly’s, which was always nomadic at the best of times.

But age has not withered him, nor a dozen dodgy Hollywood projects damaged his instinctive, impressive abilities as a stand-up. When he’s in his natural habitat of the stage, he’s the maestro of British comedy - as inflamed, passionate and animated as he ever was.

It’s been a while since he played London, and he’s greeted like a conquering hero, a deafening cheer meeting his shambling entrance, and each early joke attracting appreciative, sustained applause. That laugher, not clapping, is the reflex response to comedy is unimportant: in these early moments, the 3,600 members of the Hammersmith Apollo’s standing-room-only audience just want to pay tribute. The genuine, instinctive laughs come later.

That he’s among friends lets him get away with anything during the course of his Too Old To Die Young show; whether that means material that’s in dubious moral taste or, dare I say it, even pedestrian.

When it comes to the former, he finds jokes in the plight of British hostage Ken Bigley – or at least his uncompromisingly honest response to the news coverage of it – proving that he can be as edgy, or downright offensive as any pretender to his crown.

Of course he’s forgiven for the lapse in taste: everyone loves Billy. And his seductively haphazard style plays no small part in that.

A Big Yin gig never runs to any particular order, more it’s a jamming session of his thoughts. He leaps back and forth through anecdotes, taking unscheduled detours Virgin Railways would be proud of, until, finally, remembering to return to tales you’d forgotten he had started. “Sometimes I forget what I’m saying,” he admits. “So I just keep talking until I remember.”

These off-the-cuff moments are as good as anything he’s prepared. When he spots a Motorhead T-shirt in the front row, he’s fired into a spontaneous riff on rock and roll, illustrated with personal memories and anecdotes and providing an occasional, running theme.

He guffaws at the way he fumbles his own stories – at one point doubling up with hilarity at an aside that suddenly occurs to him, but that he fails to get out through the laughter – and the audience instinctively joins in.  The fragmented style helps him out in other ways too: not every anecdote needs a punchline if you can simply flit on to another story when you get bored.

There are some enduring themes in all this: most notably his long-established railing against the beige people and his pet subject – the bunk of organised religion. He’s not so much a grumpy old man as an angry one, becoming infuriated at any number of frustrations. At one point he even has to remind himself: “Don’t get angry, you’re supposed to be a comedian.”

But of everything he tackles, his forte remains the bodily function. The comic who got famous for his talk of ‘jobbies’ can still create a real symphony of scatology, most notably with an outrageous, exaggerated riff about the fat-busting drug that hilariously lists its side effects as ‘unstoppable oily discharge’.

To the chagrin of many class warriors, Connolly’s long since put his tenement days behind him – literally, as it happens, since a depiction of his slum housing now forms the backdrop to his set – and is now openly boastful of his many, big houses and unafraid to start anecdotes with: “So I was with Keith Richards…” What’s more, this detachment from lives more ordinary doesn’t matter one bit: the stories are still funny.

But at the two hours mark, the concentration does start to drop. And it doesn’t help that at this point he’s talking about the inanity of makeover programmes, as if we didn’t know.

That’s not the only bit that doesn’t shine: routines about the complexity of ordering Starbucks, pissing on urinal cakes, the difficulty of finding the 6ft 7in dialysis patient Osama Bin Laden, or what a man’s supposed to do with his redundant arm while lying in the spoons position all sound remarkably ordinary.

We could well do without these, not least because any show coming in at just under three interval-free hours is enough to try anyone’s patience, let alone buttocks.

There’s a brilliant 90-minute show in here (which, I suspect, may be what ends up as a DVD release), but as it stands, this evening is as long as Citizen Kane and Battleship Potemkin combined, and no one man’s that interesting – even if Billy Connolly comes close.

You know, these old blokes don’t half go on a bit…

Reviewed: September 28, 2004

Tim Minchin - Live Review

Until his appearance on Jonathan Ross’s show on Friday, Tim Minchin didn’t have much in the way of mainstream exposure. How, then, did he defy the laws of marketing and sell out almost 10,000 seats over three nights at the Hammersmith Apollo?

The short answer is by putting on a bloody good show, bringing rock’s overblown tongue-in-cheek histrionics to his virtuoso musical accomplishment. Barefoot, with skinny jeans and shock of mad-scientist hair, he certainly looks the part, while smoke, dramatic lighting and pyrotechnics – both literal and in his performance – add to the sense of occasion. The man is, undoubtedly, a charismatic showman, as the near-unanimous standing ovation he earned attests.

But while he’s a master of populist presentation, he has made fewer concessions in his sometimes forthright material. Who would have thought you could fill theatres with musings on the causation-correlation logical fallacy and a nine-and-a-half-minute jazz-backed beat poems in praise of reason? It shows you can make anything funny if you do it with enough style.

Debunking the irrational is a strong thread in this elegantly subversive and mischievously playful show, being recorded tonight for DVD. That poem, recounting an awkward dinner-party encounter with hippy chick called Storm, contains the most succinct, unarguable rejoinder to ‘alternative medicine’ that you will find anywhere; where elsewhere he snipes at creationists and Christians, proudly wearing his atheism on his sleeve. Even the love song to his wife, If I Didn’t Have You, takes all the mystique out of romance, wittily, subversively undermining it with logic.

He is, in short, a nerd. But probably the coolest nerd you’ll meet. He’s disarmingly self-effacing about the gap between the confidence he gets from the music compared to the enthusiastic, but rather more shy, persona that he adopts when he’s not behind the grand piano. He plays on this skilfully, able to get a laugh from a slightly too-choreographed flick of the hair, or failing to muster the enthusiasm for an obligatory rock-and-roll ‘Yeah!’

There are strong elements of Victoria Wood in his musical style, and Bill Bailey in his personal one, mixed with a generous portion of Tom Lehrer. But Minchin has created his own niche. The songs are more than strong enough to stand up on their own, so it’s a bonus when lines make you laugh out loud, which they frequently do.

Highlights are his beautifully bitter musical repost to an earlier bad review; the perennial classic parody of popstars turning into self-aggrandising eco-preachers, Canvas Bag and Bears Don’t Dig On Dancing, which becomes an hilarious song-and-dance spectacle. Other songs such as Dark Side are more about mood than chuckles, while the joke in the anti-religious Good Book doesn’t quite come off, despite its fine message.

But occasional moments in either stand-up and his song when the wit isn’t as sharp as the ambition are irrelevant. This plays by musical theatre rules, where the aim is to create a vibrant show with catchy tunes and warm wit. For that, top marks.

Minchin shows his range – and his emotional pull – with the encore number, White Wine In The Sun, a remarkably touching Christmas ballad for atheists, which contains not a sniff of a gag. He could so obviously direct his considerable talents in many directions – let’s be thankful comedy is the one he’s chosen.

Rich Hall - Live Review

Rich Hall has never been a man with a sense of occasion. The 3,300-seater Hammersmith Apollo may be one of the biggest solo gigs of his quarter-century-plus career, and this gig the recording of his first stand-up DVD, but he seems uncomfortable with all the trappings that entails.

He would, you imagine, rather be playing an unassuming club or – better yet – holding court among his drinking buddies in some seedy, dimly-lit bar. Not for nothing was the Simpsons’ brusque barkeeper Moe Szyslak based on Hall’s persona

His brand of grumpy comedy should be intimate and immediate, not preserved in the aspic of a video recording. So he makes no attempt at showmanship, but many deprecating comments about tonight’s situation, mocking the strange perspective on backdrop, making frequent, clumsy reference to that fact that most people who see this show will be doing so in months to come, and suggesting that a year from now his DVDs will be in a service station bargain bin, next to Best Of Jethro.

Such patter, and his semi-reluctant badinage with the front row, establishes the craggy-faced, craggy-voiced American’s authenticity, but it does mean there’s take some time until all the distractions of the night can be put behind him, and he can work towards building up a head of steam.

But once he gets going, all is right with the world. Or rather, it isn’t, given that Hall’s splenetic shtick depends on growling despairing complaints about the gloomily inevitable disappointments of human existence, succinctly and relentlessly. ‘I go where the misery is,’ he says of his decision to spend more than half his life in the UK, away from the forced cheeriness of the ‘have a nice day’ culture.

That British gloom is combined with the ruggedly down-to-earth attitude of his native rural Montana, which influences his comedy equally strongly; whether directly in his incredulous response to the danger of grizzly bears or his account of an unconventional prairie-dog pest control method, or more indirectly in his no-nonsense, suffer-no-fools rants.

Some of these are hits from his back catalogue, as you might expect from a debut DVD, whether it’s his cruelly accurate description of every Hollywood potboiler Tom Cruise has ever made, or unsophisticated late-night advertising and its near-evangelical commitment to speedy delivery. These are as funny as they are ruthlessly well-observed – and mixed with equally enyojabe newer material about America’s inconceivable multitrillion dollar debt and Barack Obama’s presidency. But just when his hackles are well and truly risen, it’s the end of the set, seeming to come far too quickly.

After the break, Hall returns as his perennial alter-ego, Otis Lee Crenshaw. Hall often seems more at ease in the guise of this hard-living country and western preacher as he is as himself. Every comedian, it’s said, secretly wants to be a music star, and jamming on a stage made out to look like a remote mid-western gas station, complete with broken-down truck and rusting tractor, as the burnt-amber sky steadily darkens, you can imagine Hall living out an old fantasy.

The music’s taken seriously, with guitarist, banjo-player, double-bassist and occasionally drummer, joining the apparently reformed recidivist for the mix of maudlin and jaunty melodies. Without the comedy element this would be a perfectly acceptable country outfit, so even if the chuckles do run dry, you can still tap your toes.

Some of the ballads are, indeed, lighter on laughs, the moody atmosphere of the more indulgent tracks only occasionally punctured with a great line, but always bookended with exquisite between-song banter. Others are heavier on the gags – the long-standing staple of his set Do Anything You Want To The Girl, Just Don’t Hurt Me or the love song to a bag lady.

As usual, he improvises a few verses around fans’ lives. As usual, he gets mixed results, which becomes a joke it itself. But it’s the big numbers that work best in the big space, such as the potentially actionable Fuck Disney. Whether getting a crowd to holler obscenities is strictly comedy is a moot point, but it’s undoubtedly a spirit-raiser – and come the DVD, music is traditionally more enduring than ephemeral old stand-up anyway.

Otis Lee Crenshaw - Live Review

Rich Hall has never been a man with a sense of occasion. The 3,300-seater Hammersmith Apollo may be one of the biggest solo gigs of his quarter-century-plus career, and this gig the recording of his first stand-up DVD, but he seems uncomfortable with all the trappings that entails.

He would, you imagine, rather be playing an unassuming club or – better yet – holding court among his drinking buddies in some seedy, dimly-lit bar. Not for nothing was the Simpsons’ brusque barkeeper Moe Szyslak based on Hall’s persona

His brand of grumpy comedy should be intimate and immediate, not preserved in the aspic of a video recording. So he makes no attempt at showmanship, but many deprecating comments about tonight’s situation, mocking the strange perspective on backdrop, making frequent, clumsy reference to that fact that most people who see this show will be doing so in months to come, and suggesting that a year from now his DVDs will be in a service station bargain bin, next to Best Of Jethro.

Such patter, and his semi-reluctant badinage with the front row, establishes the craggy-faced, craggy-voiced American’s authenticity, but it does mean there’s take some time until all the distractions of the night can be put behind him, and he can work towards building up a head of steam.

But once he gets going, all is right with the world. Or rather, it isn’t, given that Hall’s splenetic shtick depends on growling despairing complaints about the gloomily inevitable disappointments of human existence, succinctly and relentlessly. ‘I go where the misery is,’ he says of his decision to spend more than half his life in the UK, away from the forced cheeriness of the ‘have a nice day’ culture.

That British gloom is combined with the ruggedly down-to-earth attitude of his native rural Montana, which influences his comedy equally strongly; whether directly in his incredulous response to the danger of grizzly bears or his account of an unconventional prairie-dog pest control method, or more indirectly in his no-nonsense, suffer-no-fools rants.

Some of these are hits from his back catalogue, as you might expect from a debut DVD, whether it’s his cruelly accurate description of every Hollywood potboiler Tom Cruise has ever made, or unsophisticated late-night advertising and its near-evangelical commitment to speedy delivery. These are as funny as they are ruthlessly well-observed – and mixed with equally enyojabe newer material about America’s inconceivable multitrillion dollar debt and Barack Obama’s presidency. But just when his hackles are well and truly risen, it’s the end of the set, seeming to come far too quickly.

After the break, Hall returns as his perennial alter-ego, Otis Lee Crenshaw. Hall often seems more at ease in the guise of this hard-living country and western preacher as he is as himself. Every comedian, it’s said, secretly wants to be a music star, and jamming on a stage made out to look like a remote mid-western gas station, complete with broken-down truck and rusting tractor, as the burnt-amber sky steadily darkens, you can imagine Hall living out an old fantasy.

The music’s taken seriously, with guitarist, banjo-player, double-bassist and occasionally drummer, joining the apparently reformed recidivist for the mix of maudlin and jaunty melodies. Without the comedy element this would be a perfectly acceptable country outfit, so even if the chuckles do run dry, you can still tap your toes.

Some of the ballads are, indeed, lighter on laughs, the moody atmosphere of the more indulgent tracks only occasionally punctured with a great line, but always bookended with exquisite between-song banter. Others are heavier on the gags – the long-standing staple of his set Do Anything You Want To The Girl, Just Don’t Hurt Me or the love song to a bag lady.

As usual, he improvises a few verses around fans’ lives. As usual, he gets mixed results, which becomes a joke it itself. But it’s the big numbers that work best in the big space, such as the potentially actionable Fuck Disney. Whether getting a crowd to holler obscenities is strictly comedy is a moot point, but it’s undoubtedly a spirit-raiser – and come the DVD, music is traditionally more enduring than ephemeral old stand-up anyway.