Tour review

Paul McCaffrey comes with ‘big news’: he’s got a new remote control.

And that pretty much tells you all you need to know about this quintessential Everyman comedian whose shtick is largely sharing modest dispatches from his life as a 51-year-old comic, married with a young child. 

His attitude, as a man getting mildly exasperated at middle age and navigating domestic life, isn’t especially unique, but it works well for him. Early in his career his hangdog persona invited comparisons with Tony Hancock – for a younger generation his mild exasperations writ large are a bit more Josh Widdicombe.

He's got health grumbles and has realised a night in is better than a night out, but occasionally tries to recapture  his youth – although that rarely ends well, as his ill-advised escapades with a BMX attest. Yet he’s cheerfully sanguine about every setback.

McCaffrey acknowledges that he can't emulate the swagger of his musical heroes, Oasis and other Britpop bands being his rock-and-roll touchstones. So when a chance encounter with a member of The Libertines led to an invitation to open for them, he leapt at the chance – especially as it came at the end of a run of grim Christmas gigs in Birmingham.

Needless to say, it didn’t go well – a comic opening for a band rarely does. His retelling isn't rich with punchlines, rather the anecdote seems like a story more for his benefit than ours as he sets his brush with rock-and-roll greatness on the record.

Not that it matters all that much. With his air of instant familiarity, McCaffrey has nailed that ‘catching up with a mate down the pub' vibe – and if your pal opened for The Libertines, you'd want to know about it.

The underpinning cheerfulness in the face of what – on the global scale – is mild adversity serves him well, too. I’d say it was a quintessentially British approach, but given the comic’s recollection of a miserably negative man he encountered on holiday – reminding him of the moaning Minnie he never wants to be – maybe that’s not an accurate archetype. 

Similarly, McCaffrey has no truck with people who complain that a minor inconvenience must mean that the UK ‘is like a Third World country’. With amusing, if not hilarious, stories, he puts things into a perspective that some people could do with. Sometimes the middle of the road is a perfectly fine place to be.

• Paul McCaffrey: What A Time To Be Alive is on tour until May 29. Paul ​McCaffrey tour dates

Review date: 17 Mar 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett