After the break young 2016 winner Tom Lucy opened the second half with a story about how he has recently moved into a flat where he can see into the neighbour’s house through his bedroom window. And, in the words of the internet, what he saw will make your jaw drop. It’s a very funny story and – if true, which I felt the essence certainly was – it is not surprising he is telling it onstage. Though if his neighbours ever come to his gig I expect they will soon be ex-neighbours.
Kate Lucas won the Leicester Mercury competition in 2014 and is an excellent musical act. Her songs are both catchy and comical, made even more funny by the fact that she seems pretty gentle but has a vicious, sarcastic streak never that far from the surface. Her best number was about wishing terrible things to happen to someone close to her – a series of increasingly nasty punishments way worse than the initial crime.
Current champion Jack Gleadow is quite obviously a star in the making. He has the kind of mainstream appeal that suggests he could be as big as someone like Lee Evans one day. He certainly has funny bones, which helps to sell some of his more predictable material. He likes to use props too, which makes him stand out in a world of storytelling stand-ups. He got two members of the crowd up onstage for a silly bit of business involving a scooter and various film spoofs. It all feels old-fashioned but given that this country seems to be rapidly heading back to the 1970s the flat-capped Gleadow is certainly on message.
In any other year Suzi Ruffell might have been a winner but in 2011 the competition was so fiercely contested it was a tie – for the only time - between Tom Rosenthal and Ben Target. In conventional stand-up terms Ruffell is probably funnier than both of them combined. Her high energy set tonight consisted of a story from her last show about tackling an online troll and a new routine about having a smear test which already has the makings of a classic riff.
The penultimate act was another of the big guns on the bill, 2009 winner Seann Walsh. Judging by the cheers he got when he came on his Strictly scandal hasn’t dented his popularity. He was quick to address the issue with a few lines about how at least he did his bit to get Brexit off the front pages. Im fact Walsh’s set was surprisingly political, moving on to tackle the fact that maybe ordinary people shouldn’t have had the vote, given that some of his mates can barely sort out their own toilet arrangements. It was a fiercely funny performance which lifted the audience just when they might have been starting to flag.
And finally as the clock moved well beyond the three hour mark (can’t fault the gig for value for money), Romesh Ranganathan closed proceedings with an anecdote about taking his family to Center Parcs and trying to keep his kids happy by spending money on them. Ranganathan has perfected the reluctant dad schtick, someone who – as he says in those BBC ads – clearly loves his kids but is also driven made by them. His closing story about nearly losing one of his sons on the beach at Brighton reminded me of the final scene of the movie Roma. If Roma was set in a stony British seaside resort and featured a grumpy father from Crawley who resents every penny he spends on his offspring and can’t wait to go on tour to get away from them.
One final hat tip to compere Charlie Baker, who apparently never entered the Leicester Mercury competition but somehow bagged the compering spot for this gig, which meant he probably spent more time onstage if you combine all of his time between acts than when he does his own shows. Baker handled the crowd brilliantly from the very start when he asked someone in the front row who their favourite comic was and they said “Dara O Briain”. At times it felt as if Dara O Briain was the only comic who wasn’t on this bill. I doubt if the front row fan went home unhappy though.
This year's final is on Feb 23. The Leicester Comedy Festival runs until February 24. Details here: https://comedy-festival.co.uk/
