Review by Steve Bennett

Why do comics feel the need to berate people who've paid almost a tenner just to see them, and them alone, for being a 'bad crowd'? Gavin Webster mightn't have been the only one doing that this festival, but he was certainly the most vociferous and the most persistent.

To be constantly reminded how little we are laughing, and asking us just how much we're hating his show isn't going to win him friends. And maybe he ought to shoulder some of the responsibility for the awkward silence himself.

Not that he didn't try. Webster put every ounce of energy and sweat he had into a blistering performance. Yet for all his bluster, he could not engage the audience - and if the delivery's faultless, that's got to be down to the material.

First off, much of it felt very dated. He attacked Uri Geller' spoon-bending as a sham, took in the politics of Margaret Thatcher, Ian Paisley and the miners' strike and mentions Mary Whitehouse. So rooted in the Eighties was this stuff that wouldn't have come as a surprise if he launched an attack on Rubik's cubes and deely-boppers.

He sometimes latched onto a relevant angle - such as kids' thinking it's cool to be thick - but couldn't capitalise on it. Elsewhere, half-assed ideas like the Staffordshire Bull Terrier index to rate an area's scuzziness were milked for far more than they were worth.

His set-ups, too, can be repetitive. He doesn't half go on, repeat himself, paraphrase, overelaborate, reiterate recapiulate This is a man who could make a 'knock, knock' joke last 15 minutes. Presumably it's a delivery quirk designed to build up some sort of rhythm, but all it does is give us time to work out the gags' trajectory for ourselves, and so deaden the impact of the punchline.

A couple of songs accompanied by the ukulele failed to shine, too. The day after Thora Hird died every newspaper had the headline Stairlift To Heaven. Singing it now, months later, as a two-minute song seems so very futile.

All the evidence seems to suggest that this Gateshead lad is more used to playing rowdy clubs than intimate basements to attentive crowds. Everything in his delivery from the over-extended audience banter at the start, the bombastic energy and verbal and musical trickery seems designed to win over a hostile crowd.

But we all willingly came to see him. All we wanted was quality, crafted material. And that's where Webster let us down so badly.

Review date: 1 Jan 2003
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett