Tuesday 5 May 2009

And a fruit based drink for the lady

We went to see Al Murray at the weekend, aka The Pub Landlord. He was on at the Echo Arena, and we were curious to see how he would get on as he has had a rough ride in Scouseland on a few occasions.

His act started off as I expected, with him effectively identifying his foils who would be food and drink for him throughout the rest of the show. So, we had the fat bloke, the old bloke, the good looking girls, the intellectual, the getaway driver, a few nurses and secretary's, the lad who worked for a bank, and a few randoms which for this show included a 'finisher' and some stock takers from Morrison. Finally he found the ugly bloke batting way above his average, with a good looking girl.

He then ran a series of gags aimed at or involving each of these stereotypes, and frankly it was all a bit tedious. The stock takers took offense at the 'well you would in Liverpool wouldn't you' joke, and the Gordon Brown stories told in a Scottish accent, so they decided to heckle a bit. Sadly they were not very good at it, and after ten minutes or so they were shown the door.

He proved God was British with a few parables probably not from the Bible, which included alluding to the fact that he always stood his round, even if there were 5000 in the pub, which was amusing, he lambasted the London 2012 initiative, presumably to get the out of town sympathy vote, and ended by extolling the virtues of bacon as a hangover cure.

Would I go again? no, would I recommend him? only if he was doing a 30 minute slot in a comedy club, frankly he should stick to his TV chat show, but as SWMBO indicated, comedians only have a short shelf life so you have to go with it while you can.

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