The last time I saw Jack Whitehall onstage it was at a packed Wembley Arena and the audience was so young it almost felt like a pop concert. This was very different. It was in the classy Cadogan Hall in Chelsea and most of the audience looked well-heeled, well into their twenties at least and probably hadn’t come from much further than nearby Barnes, where Whitehall himself grew up.
This one-off live version of the TV chat show was in aid of Street Child, a charity raising money of orphans of Ebola in Africa. After an introduction by former Apprentice honcho Nick Hewer and a deeply moving film about the appeal, Whitehall Junior quickly identified that this was a cultured audience when he remarked that the nearest he had come to knife crime when growing up was using the incorrect knife at the dinner table. He promptly added, with a hint of mock snobbery, that it is a joke that barely gets a titter in front of bemused audiences north of Watford.
A gag about dinner was apt, because this special show felt very much like listening in on dinner party chatter. All the guests came on immediately and squeezed onto the sofa together – Alistair McGowan, Nick Robinson, Patricia Hodge and token bit of provincial rough, Joe Lycett, who pointed out that as he is from Birmingham he must be “100 per cent Muslim”.
The younger Whitehall was particularly good at spotting connections between guests. Political reporter Robinson had met Margaret Thatcher, Patricia Hodge had played Margaret Thatcher onstage and, it turned, Michael Whitehall, in top churlish form, had once dated the former PM’s daughter Carol. His well-polished anecdote about calling a cab from 10 Downing Street and saying his name was “Whitehall” easily got the biggest chuckle of the night.
If only Alistair McGowan could have done Margaret Thatcher it would have been the full set, but the impressionist explained that he leaves the politicians to Rory Bremner. Though he did then succumb to doing a brilliant Boris Johnson, which was only topped by his John Bishop take-off which was so accurate everyone thought an extra guest had wandered on.
It was a short but enjoyable evening. Jack Whitehall was happy to cue up his chums and then sit back as they nattered and his father shamelessly upstaged everyone. The room roared every time Michael told an embarrassing story about his son's childhood. As fans of the TV version probably know already, Whitehall Junior was conceived on the night of the great storm in 1987. Whitehall Senior took great relish in dusting off that bombshell one more time. It was a pretty good place to end the event as it was a story that was impossible to follow.
Find out more about Street Child here.
