The second half started with Birds, another female double act like Toucan, specialising in fast-paced character sketches. There was some clever stuff here from Amy Spinks and Katy Dixon, particularly a very relatable Indian restaurant scene in which all the cliches of Indian meals, from asking for tap water that never comes to pedantically dividing the bill, were slickly played out. Other routines didn’t land quite so smoothly but there was more than enough here to justify their third place, an improvement on their unplaced appearance in the final last year.
The seventh act, The Mayor & His Daughter, was another disconcerting curveball. Was he a Mayor? Was she his daughter? What were they playing at giving baby dolls to the audience to look after and calling BBC2 “BBC Poop”? It was one of those knowingly weird acts that was never going to win a competition like this, but it will certainly be interesting to see where they go from here.
There was more character comedy next, with Nicholas Everritt playing Warlord Django Khan, the first tyrant-turned-agony-aunt/self-help life coach. It was an interesting, entertaining idea as he proceeded to solve people’s problems with the aid of a flipchart and illustrations which, sadly, weren’t always visible from the stalls. He started slowly but about halfway through started to build momentum. The seven-minute slot is not very long to prove yourself but Everritt did enough to suggest that this is an act worth developing.
Next up were two geeky men, Tom Curzon and Luke Rollason, calling themselves Stepdads. After the geekiest had bent over and laboriously started off their pre-recorded music their short set mainly consisted of a song running down the most important things about being a stepfather. I did quite like number five, which was to make sure you keep all of the children alive. It felt a little too nerdy to me, and a little too much like the Brett Domino Trio, but they went down very well with the audience and also the other judges, landing second place.
The final act on the strong bill, Mark & Haydn, was arguably the most conventional sketch duo, two mismatched men, one gay, one dweeby (proviso - you can of course be both gay and dweeby). There were plenty of sparky ideas here, most notably a sketch about trying to squeeze past a stranger to go to the toilet on a train which was neatly pulled apart and reassembled, but on a night when the standard was extremely high they will have to settle fro the nice warm feeling of getting lots of laughs from an appreciative audience, whose willys were certainly tickled (proviso - as, I expect, were other parts for those who didn't have willys).
Yes Mama! picture by Steve Ullathorne
