Trust me, that is Jon Richardson on the screen in the distance in this picture, even if he is looking unusually muscular. One of the perennial problems of the comedy tent at Latitude is that it is too bloody popular. By the time headliner Richardson came on you were lucky to get a view of him onscreen sitting outside the tent. On the plus side the sun was shining and the sound was crystal clear.
Richardson didn’t want to mess about and hang around. With good reason. It had been a four-hour drive with only crisps for company and there was no way this finickity individual was going to do a shit on the festival site. His assured set was largely drawn from his last live tour, except that he didn’t throw a cowboy hat on the mic stand this time round.
The biggest chunk of material was about how he first met his wife (fellow comic Lucy Beaumont). His opening gambit was inviting her away on a weekend break like the very spontaneous guy he definitely isn’t. It’s a beautifully polished yarn which culminates in him hunched over in the toilet suffering from food poisoning with his new girlfriend looking after him. It was clearly true love.
Richardson also revealed that he has made some concessions to make their relationship work. He has even faked sensitive teeth so that he can have his own toothpaste tube, though the real reason is that he can’t stand the fact that his other half squeezes the tube in the middle (though if she reads his reviews she knows the truth by now). The EE phone network possibly drives him even more mad, though I doubt it.
I don’t usually like giving away stories but it doesn’t really matter with Richardson as the beauty really is in the telling. He always makes himself the central figure of fun even when he is making it quite clear that he despises the world and everyone in it and given half a chance he would spend the rest of his life at home on his own. His idea of a relaxing two-day break is spending the first day tidying everywhere and the second not touching anything.
This was an educational show too. If you want to smuggle drugs pack you suitcase as neatly as Richardson. When he was stopped at security the customs official wouldn’t dream of messing up his precision-tooled arrangement. Not that Richardson would ever smuggle drugs. Unless they came in a perfectly square box that exactly fitted the proportions of his case.
More reviews here.
