Review of a gig to launch a new 24/7 comedy radio station

How else would comedy streaming service NextUp launch its spin-off radio station than with a stand-up gig? And who better to host it than Thanyia Moore, who always hits the right mix of welcoming and teasing in her relaxed crowd work?

Opening act Roman Harris talks about being more ambitious than his mates, and that comes across in a set built on relatable, mainstream premises, seemingly targeted at the broadest possible audiences.

However, that leads to a certain familiarity in his material, such as not trusting his bladder now he’s at the grand old age of 40, or getting his sexual awakening through a mail-order catalogue. Heck, there’s even a Gollum impression.

A few times he hints at something deeper – either personal or societal – but only rarely goes beyond the superficial gag. He’s a personable and assured presence with a delivery that’s technically robust and slickly effective, but without risking revealing too much of himself, he’ll always be running at two-thirds capacity. Though it probably won't stop him becoming huge.

Alex Kealy is a nerdier presence, and had a little trouble getting his opening routine over the line, trying to weigh up people’s love of football with the human rights abuses willingly sportswashed by Fifa.That’s a hard sell less than 24 hours after a Three Lions victory, however valid the point.

The sort of people who love Dubai is an easier target to kick, and his set picked up with a whimsical but harsh analogy, demonstrating his knack for offering a quirky take on home truths. And the brutally unromantic process of trying for a baby came from a heartfelt feeling of disillusionment, however exaggerated for comedy.

As a stand-up stalwart, Ria Lina seems to perform with more abandon each year – a freedom an armchair psychologist might partially put down to the end of her 18-year marriage, addressed in her set here.

She starts engagingly freeflowing and digressive, getting stuff off her chest before settling into more structured work explaining her global citizen background – half Filipina, half-German, born in England, raised in the Netherlands and educated among the poshos at St Andrews. This features lots of gags – but, more crucially, plenty of spiky attitude. 

She teases that she’s toying with the line of acceptability, but despite the audience recoil over a Prince Andrew gag, she’s not so much an edgelord (edgelady?) as an outspoken comic who gives an ever-decreasing quantity of shits about playing nice, conveying her opinions with a fire in her belly.

More nuanced, Jessica Fostekew’s view of the world is forged through the twin influences of her grandmother Irene and dad Keith. The former a redoubtably dogged woman – a Second World War codebreaker turned tenacious monitor of dolphins on the South Coast – the latter an embittered grouch who finds misery everywhere, even in objectively nice things. Fostekew is a product of both, trying to #BeMoreIrene while recognising the odd toxic trait – especially when aggressively barracking for her son’s Under-9 South London football team.

In an aside, her mimicry of American women on a podcast is on the nose – an extended fierce pantomime of cloying support so rooted in accurate observation that it might momentarily confuse any listeners when this show airs on Comedy UK into thinking they’re hearing the real thing. It’s a tour-de-force performance almost guaranteed an applause break that surely couldn’t have been created without Keith’s relentless cynicism. 

Review date: 20 Jun 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Leicester Square Theatre