Dimitri Bakanov was a new name to me and an interesting prospect, with a Russian dad and a Ukrainian mum. This background certainly gave him some new angles on global politics (not that he got too political) and it may also be why his outlook was harsher than a Soviet winter. Bakanov’s humour started fairly dark as he discussed dating women with short visas as it saved the pain of splitting with them and then got darker as the set progressed. It was the kind of material that splits audiences as he built up to jokes about Islam, paedophilia and large women that started to feel gratuitous. He was never going to get a unanimous thumbs up from the judges, but there was definitely some talent here.
Second musical act Andy Stedman offered some light relief after that with his pop parodies, reworking the lyrics of Don’t You Want Me Baby to explain how he met his girlfriend. It was a good gag, but maybe after 2016 beard-based banter should be banned, or should that be cut? As should Tinder gags. Respect to Stedman for coming up with a funny song about celebrity deaths which was bang on trend, but he was not quite distinctive enough to figure in the final countdown from the jury.
After another busy interval suggesting that the bar might have been the biggest winner of the night, Ben Pope arrived onstage in a blur of energy. To me he had a bit of a Hobbit-y vibe going on, like a younger, posher Martin Freeman. I say young, but despite his scruffy student appearance Pope seemed a lot older than his 23 years. For starters he was supremely confident, and for mains he had some great material - about his very Catholic sounding full name Benedict Pope and then about how sports such as golf aren’t really sports at all. It was a set that twisted and turned in all sorts of ways, self-mocking and assured, theatrical yet straight-forwardly stand-up, middle class yet not Miles Juppily too posh. When the judges met the decision was made pretty quickly to award Pope first prize, though we stopped short at sending white smoke out of the chimney.
Following the high energy Pope the mood changed dramatically for the more satanic Sean Gorman. His opening routine, about being ginger (another subject getting past its tell-by date) did not bode well, but the gags were well-crafted and well-delivered in a low-energy, compact way. The bleakness of the material meant that the inevitable comparison was with Andrew Lawrence and not just because of a vague physical resemblance and stoney-faced style. But Gorman was more Lawrence-lite, which some might say is a good thing - keeping to subjects such as spicing up your failing sex life rather than attacking the liberal intelligentsia. He is a good writer and a promising performer. It will certainly be interesting to see how Gorman evolves from here.
