Ben Ennis - Live Review

Even rarer than a Scottish comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe is a Leicester comic at the Leicester Comedy Festival... yet here we have two on the same show.

First up was frizzy-haired Ben Ennis, who says his biggest claim to fame to date is being Leicester City’s Filbert The Fox mascot between 2000 and 2003.

Football’s still clearly a passion, as he describes what it’s like to support two teams at once by making the analogy between having a wife and a lover. From that premise come many jokes, generated by formula, admittedly, but effectively delivered.

That’s the essence of most of his set, which can seem like an academic exercise in comedy writing, rather than anything more instinctual. For example: Imagine if the Dragons’ Den panel were really dragons, being pitched by other mythical creatures, then see what comes out.

Yet he packs the jokes in – some obvious, some more tricksy – which combined with his amiable, unprepossessing persona makes for an entertaining 20 minutes, despite the obvious limitations. But he’s a perfectly fine warm-up act.

Matt Hollins won this festival’s new comedian of the year competition in 2004, the year after Rhod Gilbert, and – wow - look at him now. Playing a school night above an Indian restaurant.

But the fact he’s not a star rather suits his dour, hangdog style. For it’s that personality, more than the material, that makes the act. The disappointment in routines that have downbeat endings, as well as the state of his life in general is what is funny. He’s single, sex-starved and petty, with a quiver of tales of disappointment, ranging from having to travel on the bus, staying at hostels, and working in a biscuit factory.

You might call him an anti-comedian, although he doesn’t labour the fact he hasn’t any jokes. He does, in fact, possess punchlines, even though some of them date back years, and they rarely land squarely. And when they do, he’ll add a note of remorse that they could have done better.

Every day is a slog for this odd cove. Not a tragic emotional struggle, just drizzle through his soul. His routine is suitably listless, and at times frustratingly so, but at his heart he possesses an everyday misery in the Tony Hancock vein which, with more constant work, could gel into a very appealing set.

Matt Hollins - Live Review

Even rarer than a Scottish comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe is a Leicester comic at the Leicester Comedy Festival... yet here we have two on the same show.

First up was frizzy-haired Ben Ennis, who says his biggest claim to fame to date is being Leicester City’s Filbert The Fox mascot between 2000 and 2003.

Football’s still clearly a passion, as he describes what it’s like to support two teams at once by making the analogy between having a wife and a lover. From that premise come many jokes, generated by formula, admittedly, but effectively delivered.

That’s the essence of most of his set, which can seem like an academic exercise in comedy writing, rather than anything more instinctual. For example: Imagine if the Dragons’ Den panel were really dragons, being pitched by other mythical creatures, then see what comes out.

Yet he packs the jokes in – some obvious, some more tricksy – which combined with his amiable, unprepossessing persona makes for an entertaining 20 minutes, despite the obvious limitations. But he’s a perfectly fine warm-up act.

Matt Hollins won this festival’s new comedian of the year competition in 2004, the year after Rhod Gilbert, and – wow - look at him now. Playing a school night above an Indian restaurant.

But the fact he’s not a star rather suits his dour, hangdog style. For it’s that personality, more than the material, that makes the act. The disappointment in routines that have downbeat endings, as well as the state of his life in general is what is funny. He’s single, sex-starved and petty, with a quiver of tales of disappointment, ranging from having to travel on the bus, staying at hostels, and working in a biscuit factory.

You might call him an anti-comedian, although he doesn’t labour the fact he hasn’t any jokes. He does, in fact, possess punchlines, even though some of them date back years, and they rarely land squarely. And when they do, he’ll add a note of remorse that they could have done better.

Every day is a slog for this odd cove. Not a tragic emotional struggle, just drizzle through his soul. His routine is suitably listless, and at times frustratingly so, but at his heart he possesses an everyday misery in the Tony Hancock vein which, with more constant work, could gel into a very appealing set.

Tony Vino - Live Review

Judging by the queues to get into this show, there’s certainly a demand for clean comedy; primarily from parents who want to introduce their offspring to stand-up safely, but presumably also from those who believe in the maxim ‘you don’t have to swear to be funny’.

That’s true, but this show wasn’t the conclusive evidence the moral ‘majority’ might want to prove their point – and that’s largely the fault of Tony Vino, who both masterminds and headlines this show.

First, though, some perfunctory but not particularly productive compering from Spiky Mike, chatting with the attention-seeking youngster in the front row, to the exclusion of the rest of the room. And his gambits to any of the children, from ‘how old are you?’ to ‘what’s your favourite flavour of crisp?’ didn’t exactly hit a seam of comedy gold. There was some material based on the slight story of spotting a police car with a defective rear light, then over to Paul Kerensa, doing his second show of the afternoon in this venue.

This was more tried and tested material, compared to the new show, Borderline Racist, which he broke in beforehand. His comment about looking like Happy Days’ Ritchie Cunningham prompted a lot of discussion in the room; but Britain’s only belly-buttonless comedian soon got the gig back on track with his silly maths-based material, which might have gone over the heads of the younger members of the audience, but amused the older ones.

Vino has a few gently enjoyable lines about his Spanish father and being forced to grow up in dreary Preston, rather than Malaga, where he was born – but for the most part his half-hour set was drearily predictable. Gags revolved around confusing Alcoholics Anonymous with the other AA, and the very hackneyed – and very simple – observation that You Are What You Eat’s ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith is a weird shit-sniffer.

Maybe the thinking is that people who want clean comedy don’t go to stand-up clubs very often, and might not have heard this, but by the end of his set he was performing to patient silence, despite his confident stage manner, suggesting they still weren’t impressed.

Vino also had a couple of surprising routines for a ‘clean’ show. There’s a bit about the effect of childbirth on his wife’s nether regions, and a tale about the prostitutes near his home. He may have used oblique language in the first case, and been inoffensive in the second, but it’s hardly family-friendly material.

Worse, though, that long story about the sex workers is just not funny, with only a mildly amusing payoff for a lengthy story. Still, he gets to impersonate a ‘scally’ drug dealer, so at least that’s another hack comedy base covered.

No, you don’t have to swear to get a laugh. But you do have to be funny.

Paul Kerensa - Live Review

There’s a slightly provocative edge to a title like Borderline Racist that nice-guy comic Paul Kerensa can’t live up to. The title, in fact, refers to the fact that he’s going to explore the national stereotypes that most countries have of their neighbours.

For England, it’s that the Scots are spendthrift, the French arrogant and the Welsh sheep-shaggers. But what does Albania think of Moldova? Norway of Denmark? Ukraine of Estonia? These are the sort of questions Kerensa sets out to answer; armed with a atlas and a cross-section various European nationalities. He doesn’t get into anyone who’s not white; although he says this is the start of a bigger project, so maybe he will.

The result is an pleasurable skip through running jokes that have, until now, remained a mystery to those outside the nations concerned. It’s fascinating to learn what characteristics get picked up – the Germans have an especially wry gag about the introverted Finns, for example – and the few foreigners in the audience vouch for the veracity of Kerensa’s research.

Kerensa used to be a maths teacher, albeit briefly, and still has that combination of authority and a desire to impart information in an entertaining way. Edutainment, he elf-effacingly calls the show at one point; and it’s hard to disagree. If ever BBC Four need a presenter for a documentary about how nationalist sociology is revealed through humour, Kerensa would be their man, as he certainly brings the subject to life.

For a stand-up show, however, it’s not really passionate, personal or hilarious enough to set him out as a must-see comedian, and there's a couple or three lines here you might have heard elsewhere. The humour is mild and good-natured, and holds the interest in the subject in hand – especially in this laid-back Sunday afternoon slot, where hard-hitting comedy would overpower. But you might want more meat at a later hour.

There’s also a make-weight routine tagged on the end about the time he got stuck in a bathroom, that’s entirely off the otherwise interesting topic; an addendum that I suspect will be dropped by the time this affable show makes it to Edinburgh this summer. But in the rest of the hour, you might learn something, and be pleasantly entertained in the process.

Liam Mullone - Live Review

Somewhere in the shaded Venn diagram overlap between Eddie Izzard and Dylan Moran lies the careworn, haphazard comedy of Liam Mullone.

Though he appears distracted and bewildered, absent-mindedly running his hand through his messy hair as he tries to wrap his mind around the stupidities of the world, he’s actually a deceptively sharp operator.

He tackles topics off the usual comedy palette, whether an obscure fact or a grumpily nihilistic take on the human condition with intelligence and a flick of surrealism. Rather than simply accepting the default comic impression that life is shit, he gives the impression he’s thoroughly researched the idea – both in academic theory and through the unforgiving practice of having lived a bit – before coming to the same, cynical conclusion.

As a former journalist and obituary-writer, he uses language elegantly, making complex ideas accessible yet funny; while his amiably shambolic style, redolent of a befuddled but bright don, is similarly disarming. Rarely does someone who seems so confused prove so incisive.