When I arrived at the Soho Theatre last week just before the lights went down to see Robert Newman I spotted Sean Hughes in the audience. I thought that was a pretty good sighting and a nice nod to Newman that one of his contemporaries was checking him out. In the interval, however, I realised that Hughes had been beaten in the game of celebrity-audience-member Top Trumps. It was pointed out to me that Russell Brand and Jemima Khan were sitting a few rows back.
The tiny but well-located Soho Theatre has become a destination venue for great comedy in recent years, but clearly a destination venue if you want to indulge in some tacky Hello-style star spotting as well. I saw Hugh Grant there last year when Richard Peppiatt did his show about tabloid excesses. In previous years Hollywood royalty Ben Stiller was in the audience when, if I recall correctly, Patton Oswalt was in the audience. Although that can be beaten by the real royalty I saw at an Andrew Maxwell gig in Notting Hill – it was either Princess Eugenie or Princess Beatrice. I can't say which, I can't tell them apart.
There is something odd about seeing a famous face off-duty. Surely the biggest names ought to be the ones onstage. I remember thinking that when I saw Steve Coogan checking out Josie Long in a shoebox Edinburgh venue years ago. And one year there was gossip around the Pleasance Courtyard that Jennifer Saunders had been sighted in the audience of various gigs. I presume she was up there because her daughter Beattie was dipping her toes in the comedy world with sketch troupe Lady Garden
I guess the rich, famous and/or talented can't spend all their time in swanky restaurants and on the red carpet. It's nice that they get out and about and see some real grass roots comedy every now and again. And the classiest comedians clearly attract the classiest audiences. I was at the back-of-a-pub Brixton Comedy Club a few years ago watching Edinburgh Comedy Award winner Daniel Kitson and there were two other Edinburgh Comedy Award winners sitting separately in the audience – Jeremy Hardy and Will Adamsdale.
Which brings me back to Russell Brand at Robert Newman. I'd noticed that a few days earlier the swashbuckling comedy connoisseur had been waxing nostalgic about Newman's old show The Mary Whitehouse Experience on Twitter, so I guess he had Newman on the mind. And they had plenty in common, both being politically active and having searching, questing well-read minds. And, of course, Newman was, in his way, a pioneer of the sexy, thoughtful, culturally savvy long-haired comedy that Brand does so well.
David Walliams once sat behind me at a Morrissey gig at the Palladium and was at Morrissey's Roundhouse gig with Brand and Jonathan Ross in 2008 when the singer stopped the gig due to feeling poorly. Walliams, Brand and Ross famously got up onstage to explain the situation, but were hardly given a rapturous welcome by disgruntled Mozza fans. Which teaches us all one thing – if you are in the audience, please stay in the audience. However famous you are,
