This picture on the left shows how close I got to the stage when Simon Amstell was on. Yes, that’s him. The dot on the screen in the distance. It’s one of the annual problems of Latitude that the comedy is so popular it is hard to catch a glimpse of the biggest acts. And this wasn’t even an early evening show. Despite being the Saturday headliner, Amstell opted for what you might call the Kitson Gambit, choosing a 1.10pm lunchtime slot and testing the commitment of comedy fans. It didn’t work. They were too committed.
Amstell's set was a shortened version of the show he will be touring in the autumn. It’s painfully funny, but, boy, does he plough a furrow to death. As with previous shows, the theme of To Be Free is his inability to live in the moment. He charts various experiences when if only he could have been a little more laid back he might have found greater happiness – such as the time a boy band suggested he had an orgy with them (he declined, and it sounds as if the forgotten band declined afterwards too). On the other hand the curly-haired comic did once try living in the moment by having an encounter in a toilet at a friend’s house. That didn’t end too well either.
Some of the material here has been knocking about for a while, other routines are brand new, but they are all highly distinctive. There are plenty of stand-ups doing riffs about the political correctness at the BBC, but Amstell’s anecdote about putting his foot in it shortly after the death of Nelson Mandela is a new twist on the theme. Elsewhere he recalls visiting an autistic school and wondering if they are the normal people, unconstrained by society’s rules and the rest of us are the ones that are wrong. Maybe, he wonders, the right way to live is to be allowed to masturbate frantically whenever one wants to.
Like great comedians from Woody Allen to Larry David, Amstell manages to find humour in his own psychological make-up. At one point he tells a hilarious story about visiting a guru in search of enlightenment. Inevitably things didn’t work out, though at least he got a gag out of it. But if all the therapy did work and he was no longer neurotic would he still be funny? I should imagine so, but maybe not as funny as this.
Book tickets for Simon Amstell here.
