Review by Steve Bennett

Paul Foot treads a treacherous path between delicate comedy genius and awkward failure; and it’s one on which he frequently comes a cropper.

He has an uneasy stage presence, dressing and acting more like a bookishly eccentric antiques expert than a confident comedian. It’s a hesitant, deliberately amateurish persona that’s charmingly sweet, even if it does little to encourage the audience to put their faith in his abilities.

Because he’s too gauche to master the slick artifice of comedy, he instead draws deliberate attention to every bit of mechanics that goes into the set, creating a postmodern sort of anti-comedy.

And within this unlikely package flickers the flame of invention – even if it is an ephemeral brilliance that’s elusive even to him.

At its best, Foot's whittering is hilarious. The routine in which he condenses an episode of You’ve Been Framed into a few pithy and unsympathetic descriptions is fine stuff indeed. The eccentric, almost archaic language he employs is endearing and his dogged adherence to push flimsy ideas to their limits inherently, if sometimes suicidally, funny.

If you could distil what can make this work, it would be priceless, but it’s very difficult to sustain, and Foot’s set can slump to embarrassing lows as well as the giddying highs, a result that’s as dependent on the audience being on his wavelength as it is to his talents.

For this reason, he’s never going to be widely popular – although he has a growing following of those who are attuned to this uniquely ridiculous style of performance who gather in a fan club he calls, with typical ornate flourish, The Guild Of Paul Foot Connoisseurs.

By pushing at the boundaries of the art form, he becomes a comics’ comic. Further acclaim will depend on whether he can make the wit accessible without compromise.

Review date: 1 Jan 2005
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett