Most cult American stand-ups play the Soho Theatre when they come to London. Not Dave Hill. He has somehow been drawn, like a well-dressed moth to a flame, to the bright lights of Tufnell Park for a short residency at this boutique basement club. It’s a lovely, weird venue and strangely appropriate for this lovely, weird comedian.
I don’t know if people have ever bought tickets for him hoping to see Slade’s dandyish guitarist with the same name, but if they did last night they were still treated to some decent guitar licks from a dapper muso – this one in velvet jacket, psychedelic trousers. Hill also plays in the band Valley Lodge and is a pretty useful musician, opening by playing requests, doing Eddie Van Halen licks and generally showing off his lo-fi axe hero skills.
There is a lightness to his riffs and also a lightness to his comedy, which has a nice puppyish-yet-deadpan tone. If Hill has a catchphrase it is “thank you”, but rather than say it after a big gag he says it after a throwaway line, like “I just flew in from Norway”. It’s a tic that gets funnier and funnier the more he says it.
The set can be divided into neat bite-sized chunks. There’s the opening music accompanied by a number of neat little one-liners. Then Hill moves more into longer stories, having explained that he comes from Cleveland, which is “like the Paris of north-east Ohio.” He has just arrived from shows in Norway, where he didn’t understand the language apart from when they said his name in a sentence, which made him feel like a dog must feel.
There is also a great anecdote about life on the road with his band and his encounters with Japanese toilets in Tokyo. As he admitted, anyone with experience of Japanese toilets will know where this routine is heading, but Hill freshens it up with his own idiosyncratic take on the subject. His tale of an encounter with a homeless man in Manhattan is a useful reminder that while gentrification has permeated all major cities one may still occasionally be lucky enough to come across some old school piss-drenched scuzziness.
Just when it looks as if the show is coming to an end he whips out his guitar again, this time to accompany some self-penned erotic short stories. He quickly loops together a backing track over which he recites gnomic lines, warning the audience in advance that this might make them horny. It’s redolent of Tim Key’s poetic style but with a twist all of its own. I don't know if anyone did get horny and I’m still not sure how Hill ended up in Tufnell Park. But regarding the second part of that last sentence I’m glad he made it.
Until Friday April 24, with nightly special guests. Thursday’s guest is Harry Hill, Friday’s guest is a surprise. Tickets here.
