Review of the talent hunt final

The career pipeline for all the good stand-ups emerging from new act competitions may be ever-narrowing, but still the talent flows, as the contest run by the Crack Comedy Club in Kingston, on the South West edge of London, proves.

Winner was Ridwaan Hussain, as recently seen in the champion of champions climax of Backyard’s Comedy Knockouts. He has a strong line in self-deprecation, mining all the insecurities he has about himself, and offering both a clever way into the inevitable ‘what I look like’ icebreaker and a delightfully funny way of expressing it. 

He occasionally has to reassure the audience with an ‘I’m joking, guys’, lest we feel so sorry for him, given the slightly bleak picture of his life that he portrays. From the gutter he punches up at horsey posh people, with material that’s both broad in the intent but subtle in the detail – and that’s a strong combination.

The night started with Olly Miller, who has a sub-Izzardesque delivery with a hesitant stream of consciousness full of deliberate ‘yes, umm, well, and, erm… sort of thing’. In his hands – and probably especially when in the opening slots – it takes away much confidence that he’s going to be funny.  There are some decent ideas, with his most fruitful premises revolving around big thoughts on mundane situations, but the set and delivery are not fully gelling yet.

From vacillation to over-the-top confidence as Laura Gomez Gracia gushes on to the stage full of bubbly Valencian verve. Growing up in rural Spain with a  controlling mother has gifted her with generational trauma (‘issues, but not the sexy kind’) which she’s more than willing to share. Her quirky, confident force-of-nature personality carries a set that would benefit from more crafted jokes, but she’s immensely watchable.

Joe Da Costa is a by-the-numbers musical comedian, for better or for worse. He has the self-awareness to acknowledge the divisive nature of his genre and the arrogance often endemic in guitar-slinging acts, without doing a great deal to counter these issues. Yet he and his instrument inject energy into the room, and there’s a mischievousness as he plays around with lyrics that become offensive out of context. It’s a little cheesy but hugely effective, and would command the rowdiest of crowds.

Camp and well-mannered, Ily Hamida’s delivery starts a little too formal but he soon relaxes into it and lets a more natural spark emerge. Observational material draws on his Moroccan heritage to paint a scene, while gags range from puns to broad caricatures. It’s an appealing mix from a personable comic, who seems like he has a lot to offer.

Looking like someone typed ‘Rylan but extra hench’ into an AI image generator, Max Silver is something of an unreconstructed geezer, unironically employing phrases like ‘first-class ticket to Vag-istan’ after complaining about women who won’t sleep with him and confining him to the ‘friend zone’. He dominates the stage and well understands the technicalities of stand-up to deliver with impact, though the material is formulaic and often impersonal. But when he talks about crypto ads on social media, that feels like lived experience.

Droll New Zealander Mariah Bowden also slips into a few stock jokes, many at the expense of the Australians she’s so often mistaken for, others offering payoffs to the ‘my body’s a temple…’ that sound a bit too obviously like the result of a writing exercise, though the results for both are solid. There’s a pleasantly dark undertone to some of her writing, especially when talking about tricking her boyfriend into getting her pregnant, yet she keeps it relatable. So while she adheres to a few safe traits of the newer act, there’s promise here.

Luckily there was a break to split her from another dry antipodean talking about making babies – though Kat Darling has a different approach, not least because she wants to achieve parenthood in a same-sex couple. This likeably chatty comedian’s set also revolves around her evil corporate job, and the privileged life it affords her, though she spares herself too brutal a skewering. Her main strength appears to be working the audience, as she proves adept at bouncing off the people she converses with, always with a light but funny touch.

Teacher and comic Shiv Sayti takes a very well-trodden path in his set, from his appearance – big-nose jokes that can’t beat Steve Martin’s self-insulting symphony in Roxanne – to living in a shithole neighbourhood to dating apps. Typical gag? ‘I went speed dating.. I was the only one on speed.’  The jokes are efficiently delivered but all-too obvious.

Kwami Odoom is a far more interesting prospect, with playful, knowing content about his mixed-race background and his ‘Karen’ of a mother, a regular on protests. He makes social points, only to immediately undermine them with an impish gag, while other stories lean into absurdity.  He’s a charismatic comic and has acting chops which give him a presence. Yet he’s open in his delivery, not hiding behind a persona as so many thesps-turned-stand-ups do. An enticing prospect.

This isn’t Pat Smith’s first competition final, as last year he won the Laughter Class contest run by Jim Davidson’s Ustream platform. He shares some of Davidson’s rough-diamond London geezer personality, albeit without the toxicity that’s come to be associated with the older comic. You could, at a push, say there’s a naivety to him – he delights in seeing the moon during the day – and even gags about the likes of notorious OnlyFans creator Bonnie Blue remain on the cheeky, rather than seedy, side. He also packs in plenty of relatable material about getting older and family life – and even if the trope about thinking your child is a prick is a well-worn one, Smith delivers it effectively, as he does with all his material.

Review date: 23 Jul 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: The Grey Horse Kingston