Stewart Lee
It's that time of year again; a time of high adventure, even higher beer prices, pretty barmaids, even prettier female tourists, and a taste of some comedy and theatre that comes around only once a year in the life of an East End Glaswegian. I met Alan and Tony at the bus stop around 3pm and we didn't have long to wait for our transport to arrive. During the hour long journey I alternated between saying the rosary and deleting some of the 1500 text messages which is slowing down my phone, all the while trying to ignore a fuelled up loud mouth seated a few places behind. He interrogated a poor Sudanese man in a friendly but insistent way for the first half of the journey and then created a domestic scene with his better half, if you can call her that, for the remainder. Just after I stepped off the bus I remarked to Alan "If I ever turn out that like, you have my permission to shoot me". And I meant it. We then headed in the direction of The Assembly Rooms, a five minute walk from the bus station. All three shows this evening were to be held at The Assembly Rooms, which was a bit bizzare, so we thought that there would be no rushing about inbetween gigs but this did not prove to be the case. After a few pints at Wetherspoons and an interesting discussion about the Olympics, which were being shown on tv, we shuffled off for our first gig of the festival. The little I knew of Stewart Lee before this gig was a quick look at his standup on YouTube and I wasn't overly impressed. At The Assembly he bounded onstage and started brightly with some sharp socio-political jokes, but then for some reason the middle section started to flag badly. He started to play on the fact that only some parts of the auidence laughed at or understood his jokes and he began to explain the mechanics of his jokes in a way that suggested something was going wrong. I don't know how much of this was scripted or if he really did feel the need to explain things, but it was not funny and it made me feel uncomfortable. He picked up towards the end and finished strongly, but by then it was too late and I was glad when he had finished. He's a clever guy, I'll give him that, but not my type of comedian. A bit too cynical and smug. After the gig we didn't have much time so we shovelled down a cheap but unsatisfactory meal at McDonald's and rushed back to The Assembly Rooms for 'The Return Of The Lumberjacks', a trio of Candian comedians. The MC for the show, Craig Campbell, was a likeable hairy Canadian guy, and could not have been more different from Stewart Lee. He was the funniest of the Lumberjacks, interacting with the crowd well and dipping into Scottish culture for good comic effect. Next up was a rasping drawl dude whose name I did not quite catch. He was funny at times but never really engaged me in the same way the MC had done. Mick Foley guest appeared for ten minutes, so we got a little taster of what was to come later that evening. Last on was Stewart Francis, a comedian who seems to be battling it out with Tim Vine to be the king of the one-liners. His jokes were both corny and clever, and had the auidence groaning and laughing in equal measure. He's an edgier, harder version of Tim Vine but not quite in the same class. After the show we hurried about looking for a pub that did not have queues to the bar ten feet deep but we were out of luck and had to return to The Assembly unrefreshed. The queue for Mick Foley, former pro-wrestler and hardcore legend among devoted fans, was very long but we managed to get a decent vantage point inside. Mick's show proved to be interesting, funny and entertaining, and probably the highlight of the evening. He gave us a few anecdotes and behind the scenes stories about the bizarre world of pro-wrestling, but I was hoping for a bit more in that regard. Maybe the baser side of my nature was hoping that he would dish the dirt on some fellow wrestlers but he never did that. Still it was a good conclusion to a decent start to the festival. We travelled home relatively unscathed. I say relatively, because Alan was seated next to a semi-drunk passenger who was slumbering and slabbering over him at times. I guess that just has to go down as collatoral damage. It is the Festival after all.
Mick Foley
No comments:
Post a Comment