Geoff Norcott came out as a right-wing comedian long before it could be a lucrative career bankrolled by GB News and amplified by Elon Musk’s X.
He’s never fully bought into that grift, however, as his standing is more centrist dad than toxic propagandist, a straight-talking voice of relative reason that befits his self-proclaimed status as a ‘basic bloke’.
Politically, he takes easy pops at Keir Starmer’s thin, tinny voice, and if he avoids taking swipes at the Conservatives it’s not because of partisanship but because ‘it feels like bullying’ such a weakened party. He even admits a grudging admiration for Angela Rayner, who now lives just minutes away from this Hove venue. Interestingly, Reform barely get a look-in.
These few mentions aside, Basic Bloke is not a political show… in fact, it keeps its sense of purpose muted, lest it knock the mate-down-the-pub vibe Norcott has down to a T. He admits he's no Micky Flanagan when it comes to powerhouse performance, but is nonetheless good craic.
Off-stage, he has become something of an advocate for men’s mental health and getting better educational outcomes for working-class boys who are increasingly left behind – and that’s the closest to a theme.
So he does touch on masculinity, though always as a preface to a joke. That flippancy comes naturally for a man who has gone to counselling but still feels weird about it, mocking himself for doing anything which he fears is too ‘feminine’. He also questions the value of therapy, tongue in cheek, dismissing an excuse to vent at people who wind him up… but he already has that outlet in his stand-up.
Men’s unwillingness to communicate with their mates can be a mental health issue, but it’s also fodder for good old material about the differences between men and women –almost always certain ground for any comic
He also talks about the positive side of being a man, wanting to protect family and fix things. Playing to the troops in Afghanistan, he convinced himself he could be an elite soldier himself in a Partridgesque fantasy.
Speaking up for blokes in a comedy landscape normally dominated by more woke messaging is typical of his persona, iconoclastic enough to venture slightly unfashionable opinion, but never full-on provocateur. In this vein he’ll gently paw at some of the more indulgent end of food tolerances or self-canonising parents, but the mocking is gentle.
He’s more everyman than polemicist. The largest positive reaction he gets tonight comes from complaining about people playing their music out loud on trains, the least controversial bugbear there could surely be.
A straw poll reveals no men under 30 in the audience – a demographic time bomb for his career that he recognises – even if it does signify that his message is missing those who might need to hear it.
However, for those fellow middle-aged centrist dads, he’s reflecting their lives back at them, from declining libido to wondering what’s happening with Gen Z that they don’t go for nights on the lash. And as the father of a nine-year-old son, he’s got an amusing observation about how ‘dad-‘ has become a prefix for terrible, whether it be in dancing, jokes or bods.
It’s typical self-effacement from an agreeably plain-talking and unshowily adept comic.
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