Review by Corry Shaw

Let’s be very clear here. A certain percentage of the population will disagree vehemently with this review, including the majority of the audience that were in the show tonight. Mark Walker can and does make people laugh but does this make him a good comedian?

If someone can make a roomful of people laugh, and I mean really belly laugh, surely that makes them a competent comedian at the very least. Not in my opinion, not when your laughs are only gained from expensive props, borderline homophobic material and lines that must have been considered old when Mark Walker’s father was first treading the boards.

There is no doubt that Walker is a good showman, he has a number of convincing accents, reasonable impressions and clearly the wealth to fund the most pizzazzy set I’ve seen in such a small room. But scratch the shiny surface and there is very little depth of content.

A limp wrist, a camp accent and a five-minute routine about Spiderman: The First Gay Musical may be just about tolerable if there was a payoff or a point. Chortle’s policy is generally not to reveal jokes in my reviews but ‘Spiderman, Spiderman, loves to be inside a man’ is not a punchline worth protecting, regardless of how much dancing about goes alongside it.

I glance around the room as Walker takes us through number upon number of famous Scorpios, listing which zodiacal traits they have taken on. Huge laughs again for pointing out that Charles Manson was bad but seemed happy and Marie Curie was good but ugly.

And so it goes on, Glaswegians have a funny walk, Sister Act is a bad film, men wank into socks. The laughs keep coming and I keep despairing.

Yes there are people who will like this show, yes these people should be catered for, does this mean I would recommend it? No.

Review date: 12 Aug 2009
Reviewed by: Corry Shaw