'This taught me how funny and absurd a piece can be while telling a beautifully human story'

Lachlan Werner picks his comedy favourites

Absurd comedy ventriloquist Lachlan Werner is back at the Edinburgh Fringe with his new show WonderTwunk, about the strongest boy in the world… Here he picks his Perfect Playlist comedy favourites.

How To Basics (YouTube Channel)

My first choice might already seem rogue, but I think these YouTube videos contain a kernel of something vital and carnal that pulls me back to comedy.

On first glance, yes, these are as low as it gets, a person in their kitchen just destroying things. On closer inspection however... Yes, that's what this is.

But it's also a great demonstration of both escalation and surprise. This is something I obsess over, the ability to surprise an audience again and again, on micro and macro levels. So yes, these videos are absolutely revolting and viscerally awful but I do also think they're art.

Kitchen scene from Cat In The Hat (Mike Myers film)

This list is already making me look chaotic and juvenile, but following from How To Basics, this scene is IT for me. A big confession is I think this horrid film was the first comedy film I loved. It's essentially Austin Powers for kids. Me and my sister quoted it relentlessly growing up

This scene is particularly mad - Mike Myers plays THREE versions of his character (the magical, apparently shapeshifting, cross-dimensional eponymous cat). The scene is a live TV show called Astounding Products taking place in the kitchen of the child protagonists, where one version of the cat shows another version his invention for making cupcakes.

They bicker, it gets violent, one cat calls another ‘wrong, stupid and ugly like your mum’ and the scene culminates in the cat chopping off his own tail and screaming ‘son of a b****’ before the film cuts to a holding screen.

This is the film adaptation of a charming Dr Seuss book. Many Dr Seuss fans hated this film (including his widow, who subsequently banned live action Seuss films), but I loved its irreverence so much. This film seems to self-destruct on its own source material. It's surrealism on surrealism, a recognisable Suessy charm with an ultra stupid SNL edge.

All of Little Shop of Horrors

I think all of this musical and subsequent film directed by Muppets legend, Frank Oz, taught me what perfect storytelling looks like, and how funny and absurd a piece can be while telling a beautifully human story.

If you subtract the horror plant aspect, it's just a tale of poverty and dreamers with no tools to escape. And the dreamers are perfect comedic heroes - at once flawed, naive, slightly grimy but equally squeaky clean. Seymour is dorky and optimistic but eventually tragic in his apathy, Audrey has simple dreams of a comfortable, domestic life, and a man who will treat her with kindness.

But then there is also an alien plant who has come to devour humankind and achieve world domination. As well as a sadistic dentist boyfriend and a doo-wop trio Greek chorus.

These ingredients make one for the most delightful, dark, moving pieces of theatre ever. I've watched this film so many times I could probably play any role, and would love to (they are literally all gifts).

The genius writing of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken (as any Little Mermaid fans know) has the ability to be witty and naive at the same time, which makes for a playful self awareness WITH emotional truth.

It's everything I ever want from a long-form comedic piece. The film includes hilarious and detailed performances by Rick Moranis (my biggest crush), Ellen Greene, Steve Martin (my other biggest crush), Bill Murray and Levi Stubbs (who is just actual perfection singing as the plant).

Meow Meow

Meow Meow, the internationally adored cabaret star, recently returned to London for a run at Soho Theatre and I turned into a 16-year-old fan-girl.

I love a performer who can make an entire room feel full of an electric current. Watching Meow Meow is a masterclass in holding a room in the palm of your hand and changing their breath with the flicker of an eyelash.

As a teenager, I saw Meow Meow perform at Shakespeare’s Globe (twice, once as Titania and again in her own Christmas show) and in a concert of banned/lost music from Weimar Germany with the late Barry Humphries. I think these performances changed the course of my life.

There is a shaky, extremely low quality video of Meow Meow doing a set at Duckie at the RVT on YouTube, and even through a terrible 2010 phone recording you can FEEL the generosity, frisson, hysteria of being in a room with this performer.

Meow Meow is ridiculous - her shambolic style has influenced so many performers - constantly teetering on raw fragility but always one razor-sharp line away from an explosive laugh.

Her costume changes are political. Her every delayed entrance a biting comment on the state of art. This sharpness is no surprise - she's an academic, researcher, trained ballet dancer, member of the Pina Bausch company, has a degree in fine art, all while singing lullabies for humanity.

Maria Bamford's albums

I was a little late to the Maria Bamford party, discovering her fully during lockdown in 2020. Her albums were the first time I had to ban myself from listening to something outside the house, because I would explode with laughter on public transport and sometimes shock people.

I almost didn't feature Maria's work on this playlist because I combed through previous lists by fellow comics and saw how many others had already cited her as a hero. But it's undeniable, Bamford is legend.

She speaks on mental health and the trappings of existing in capitalism in a way that is cuttingly honest and viscerally silly.

I am specifically shouting out her albums, which have brought me a lot of comfort and laughs. I love her YouTube series, The Maria Bamford Show, and her Netflix special Old Baby (during which the audience incrementally grows in numbers), but as quite a visual performer and maker it's rare for me to find a stand-up who can tickle me to the extent Maria does with just her voice - her vocal talent, by the way, deserves an article of its own.

As someone also hinging a lot of comedy on vocal acrobatics I find her transformations just awesome.

Listening to her most recently released album, People Pleaser, I cry-laughed just at the way she said 'Peppa Pig' a few times.

Peppa Pig: Mr Potato Comes to Town

OK, everyone will laugh at my final choice. I've looked and no other comedians have said this one. I have good reasons.

Firstly, Peppa Pig is genuinely one of the driest, most beautifully self-aware TV shows ever made. They use that classic 'uh oh' trombone comedy sound to undercut awkward lines. The voice acting has a hilarious flatness.

But the main thing I love about Peppa Pig is that none of it makes any fricking sense, and the writers know this. I love the type of 'make-up-the-rules-as-we-go' style of world building they apply, across the animation and writing.

All the animals constantly have both eyes on one side of their head. Sometimes they're drawn with stick legs and arms and sometimes they're not. There is a character called Mrs Rabbit - who works every conceivable job in the Peppa Pig cinematic universe (PPCU) - and a character called Mummy Rabbit - who is mother to many child rabbits - but they look identical, have the exact same voice and wear the same outfit, and you only find out they're not the same character many seasons in.

But nothing is as stupid to me as Mr Potato. I am obsessed with Mr Potato. Mr Potato begins in the PPCU as an anthropomorphic fitness freak potato on TV.

I assumed he was a cartoon (a la Itchy and Scratchy in the SCU - Simpsons cinematic universe), but no. In the episode, Mr Potato Comes To Town, it is revealed that Mr Potato is in fact a giant, sentient, walking talking potato. There are no other sentient vegetables in the PPCU, so unsurprisingly, all other characters are deeply puzzled by his existence.

HE himself is deeply puzzled by his existence. The children (animals) question his authenticity - ‘but you've got legs, potatoes don't have legs’ - to which he replies ‘erm’.

Why did the writers of Peppa Pig do this? It's some kind of cruel joke that I find so funny.

I love Mr Potato so much that he actually featured heavily in an early early draft of my show, WonderTwunk.