Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Wrestling Lessons, First Gigs and Sketch Confusion. Long Live Comedy 26th February 2013.

It's often said that anything goes at Long Live Comedy, and last night was no exception. The MC for the evening was Graham Oakes and he got the night off to a comfortable start, discovering that three quarters of the audience were there to support one act and that some of the audience might not be completely switched on upstairs.

With 8 acts on the bill things kicked off straight away, with Nick Cranston getting the night off to a great start including a joke that could possibly be good about 'that man off of Knight Rider'. Next up was newcomer Michael Holford talking about his longing for 'red choppers', followed by Long Live regular Paul Gerard with his unique blend of brand new material to close the first section.

Graham got the second section going by revealing the future of the Fine art students in the room as well as analysing the seemingly invisible beard of a man. Lee Kyle then came to the stage prepare to do jokes, and then preceded to do none. The experience that followed, well, you really had to be there. He began by teaching two of the audience a new way to clap, noticed one of them looks like the wrestler Jack Swagger (he did, I Googled him) and preceded to teach the Jack Swagger lookalike how to do do Jack Swaggers finishing move on the female audience member he had on stage. He finished by trying to convince said lady to break up with her boyfriend and go off with her newly trained wrestling friend.

George Zach closed the second section and finished with a particularly crowd pleasing joke involving how fat he is and percentages. The vast number of mathematics students in the audience were loving it.

The final section kicked off with a comedy theatre/sketch group called Alphabetti Spagetti. To say the room was not prepared for what followed would be an understatement. It can be awkward when a single comedian performs to a room in silence, but at least that comedian can address it. Imagine 3 people who can't deviate from their script performing to a room in silence. Yes, it was something to behold.

Next up was the man everyone (or nearly everyone) had come to see; Keiran Pulleyne. He had a successful gig with this being his first performance. It will be interesting to see how his material develops when he isn't performing in front of people he knows.

Finishing the night off we had Marc Smethurst, who did an excellent job of holding the rooms attention with his herb related woes.

We are going to do our best to update this blog with the events of the evening from now on. So keep checking back and we'll see you next Tuesday!