Tim Harding's comedy diary

Reviewer Tim Harding gives a rundown of the comedy he's been watching in London - and online - in the last two weeks.

Would it be right to say that my whole ‘career’ in comedy criticism has been a long con to get press tickets to You Me Bum Bum Train? Well, maybe it started off like that but I like to think I’ve found things to enjoy about comedy along the way.

No, I kid, I jest, but I was one of many people who were very excited about the return of YMBBT. The cultish show (or show-ish cult) is now 20 years old and in its 11th iteration, and still represents the ultimate evolution of the theatrical experience.

If you know anything about YMBBT, you’ll know that what actually happens inside is cloaked in legally-enforceable secrecy, so this examination is going to necessarily be short on detail, but I think I can say that you experience the show as a passenger who goes on a ride through parallel worlds. 

These worlds are created by an army of volunteers (they need 500 every night) who provide a striking reversal of the normal audience-performer ratio. For one night only, you are the sole audience member, surrounded by five hundred performers, all trying to give you the night of your life.

So what are the comedic applications of this unique format? I spent maybe too much time thinking about that on my journey through alternate dimensions. There are ways in which it reminded me of a recent experience trying out improv for the first time – forced to respond to a dizzying array of absurd scenarios with no warning, the most challenging aspect was getting out from behind myself and being open to the experiences, rather than disappearing behind a protective veil of irony.

Seen from the outside, all of these scenarios are inherently comedic. 'Drastically underqualified person is placed in [INSERT SCENARIO HERE] with no warning’ is a time-honoured comedic trope, but as the underqualified person in question, it’s difficult to perceive the situation in those terms. 

Guy Goma being interviewed on BBC News 24 despite not being the IT expert they thought he was is one of the funniest things that’s happened in human history; I wonder if there was any part of Guy Goma which was finding it funny at the time?

One other thing: if Guy Goma had laughed during his ordeal, it probably wouldn’t have been as funny to us. Equally, if you were to laugh or improvise a joke during your ride on YMBBT, the performers would almost certainly look at you blankly. 

And the same thing happens if you try and give a ‘funny’ answer when called upon for crowd work at a stand-up gig. All that’s needed from you as a participant is the unvarnished truth, and the performer understands, as should we, that the scenario is only funny if the person at the centre of the joke doesn’t get it.

I don’t know if it’s necessarily the most profound experience I’ve ever had in a show. It aims to represent all life, and partially succeeds, but has more to say about its breadth than its depth. Certainly it’s worth going to great lengths to experience it for yourself, including fabricating a career in arts journalism. And if you can’t ride as a passenger, they’re always looking for volunteers…

In more normal comedy news, I caught the first Edinburgh previews of the year in the form of a double bill at the Bill Murray. 

Will Owen, working on his second show, is an interesting proposition in that his character on stage seems to want to be the archetypical obnoxious gay zoomer, but is too sweet, too earnest and too bashful to fully convince as this type of figure. Far from compromising his stage persona, this instead generates an interesting tension between the cattiness he’s reaching for and the shy warmth that he actually projects. 

His new material, all about pining for a real relationship amidst the empty gratification of hookup culture, works best when he’s bouncing off older gay couples that he finds in the audience. It brings out his inner romantic.

Sharing the bill with him was Ele McKenzie, who’s recently been lending her talents to Ada Player and Bron Waugh’s excellent Blap, Peaked, and the new BBC comedy Funboys. 

Among recent up-and-comers, McKenzie is a clear standout with a unique persona: a slightly spooky ex goth curdling in her parents basement into a benignly unhinged and overmedicated femcel. 

Her material is often incredibly explicit, bordering on revolting (even for someone like me who loves slime n grime and all that stuff), and delivered with a calculated gormlessness. Her vocal monotone and blank expression are the perfect delivery vehicle for writing that’s choreographed for maximum impact. 

No one else is doing this flavour of haunted/gross/hysterical modernism. After seeing her working up material for a couple of years, I’m getting impatient for the debut because she’s more than ready to make some serious waves.

Finally, I wanted to draw attention to probably the best American YouTube special of 2024, which went completely unnoticed over here. 

Dan Licata’s For the Boys is a masterpiece of dirtbag absurdism in the Conner O’Malley mould. Licata - who comes out of the same Brooklyn scene that gave us O’Malley, plus Sarah Squirm, Joe Pera, Podcast About List and Joy Tactics - filmed his special on stage at his old high school, in front of a sparse audience of teenage boys. 

Unlike most American audiences, they don’t make for the most enthusiastic crowd, but it’s always funny when the filmmakers cut to the audience reaction shots of self-conscious, expressionless boys presumably thinking about Fortnite and how to make it as a pro gamer. 

But his writing is so good that he doesn’t really need anyone hooting and hollering on his behalf, as he strings together run after fantastic run of mad claims like his project to widen his urethra with an earlobe gauge, his medical insurance that only covers bug bites, or the time his Mum got paralysed from the waist up after swan diving off the stage at an all-female Papa Roach cover band gig.

 I hope Licata and his associates start performing in the UK more often because that scene is producing some of the funniest stuff in the world right now.

Published: 2 Mar 2025