The second half started with musical trio Rasputin’s Lunch Box. The name sounded like they might be extremely weird but they were actually not like that at all. Jokes about the odd things one can buy in supermarkets like Aldi have become a bit of a comedy staple for stand-ups. They simply turned the idea into a song which was amusing even when you had a pretty good idea of what was coming. Musical comedy acts seem to fair well in competitions and they were definitely one of the most crowdpleasing acts on the bill, ending with an accidental big laugh when one of them knocked over a mic stand with his guitar as he walked off. Maybe they should keep that in.
Sindhu Vee felt like the first stand-up comedian on the bill as she simply came on, stood still and told funny stories. If there had been a lot of stand-ups already she might have felt stale, but instead she felt refreshing as she compared parenting Indian-style with parenting Danish style (her husband is from Denmark). While her husband’s stance is give the children Lego and make them happy the Indian way is to make sure they are riddled with guilt over your death as early as possible. It was clever stuff, though of course for Indian parenting you could also real read “Jewish parenting”. It was enough to earn Vee joint third place.
The Establishment was a double act that combined an almost music hall sensibility with modern clowning. Dressed as upper class English gents they engaged in quickfire nonsense chat with each other when not prodding members of the audience with their rolled up umbrellas. I’ve seen them before in a smaller venue and this works better when it is more immersive and in-your-face. I don’t know if it would work on Live at the Apollo or in larger doses, but it did have an eccentric appeal.
Irishman Enda Muldoon was a stand-up who might go places if only he could find his voice. He started out with a gag about how he loved smoking weed and yet somehow he came across as the world’s least likely stoner because actually he turned out to very a pretty sharp observational comedian. Maybe that was part of the joke, but if it was it went over my head.
Lauren Pattison is becoming a regular in competitions and it is probably only a matter of time before she starts winning them. I’ve seen this young Geordie comic a few times and she moves forward each time. Her material about trying to make ends meet in London and being a Geordie from Byker was particularly pithy, as was a routine about how being a comedian is the only profession where someone unqualified comes up and offers you advice. I’m not sure if her Cheryl Cole gag could be broadcast on TV but it certainly won over the Leicester Square audience.
No stand-ups on the bill? By the time Rahul Kohli (pictured, by Olivia Harris) appeared it felt as if there were too many of them. Except that Kohli was so good it didn’t matter. Like Pattison Kohli is a Geordie - a “Newcastle Brown Male” – and he has a clear talent for telling a story. His main routine was about moving to Scotland and how it almost felt like a compliment when he was told to “go home” - meaning go back to England. Kohli had just the right amount of post-Brexit politics in his set and there was something very winning about his youthful energetic style. Sure enough he was voted Top of the Bill by the judges and you can expect to be seeing a lot more of him.
Last but not least was Phillip Lucas, who hit the ground running with a succession of rapid-paced visual and verbal gags. A lot of it was simple wordplay or Harry Hill-style bizarreness but it was consistently funny (and, strangely, it included the second Gary Kemp reference of the final). Some of his daftest onscreen gags were actually more original and inventive than they seemed at first – such as imagining what a real postman would look like if he had the same physical proportions as Postman Pat. A stupidly nice way to close the show, Lucas notched up joint third place.
