Miss-Delectable
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http://www.pembrokeshiretv.com/content/templates/v6-article.asp?articleid=1866&zoneid=50
THIS month’s Span Laugh Lines Comedy Club turned out to be something of a family affair.
I decided to take my wee sister with me as well as our fabulous pembrokeshiretv photographer. The outing soon snowballed to include the senior Hotchins, and a car full of us set off to Narberth’s Queens Hall.
On my way there, reservations started to set in... What if the comedy was too near the knuckle? What if the language was terrible? What if my progenitors just plain hated it and demanded to be taken home during the interval?
The tension increased further when we arrived at the hall. We had got there early enough to get a table (hoorah), but late enough so that that table was the one directly stage left. The heckle or be heckled table. The table that always seems to be directly in the comedian’s line of fire.
The evening started smoothly enough as compere Kevin told us about his train journey down from Pontardawe, sessions with an imaginary girlfriend, mused on the logistics of legalising certain substances and shoplifting in Lidl.
With a bit of audience participation worthy of any pantomime in the land he then introduced the evening’s first act, Andrew Bird.
Mr Bird started his set by pacing the stage explaining how he didn’t have a joke to start off with he would just wait and see what came to him. He didn’t have to wait for very long. The flash bulb from pembrokeshiretv’s photographer saw him jump about three feet and launch straight into it.
“Bloody hell,” I thought you were a speed camera there,” he exclaimed. “That’s another three points on my license.”
He went on to reprimand our photographer that he could have been epileptic and then changed tack telling the audience:
“We bought him down here, we take him to every gig, life on the road and as many Ginster’s pasties as you can eat.”
And so it was, the curse of the heckling table had begun to take effect but would the parents remain immune? They certainly did for the rest of the likeably laddish Andrew Bird’s set, as he expounded on adventures in Karaoke, coupledom, stag weekends, hangovers, boy racers, gangsta rap and pissing in other people’s houses.
The comedian smattered the set with current events and made things that really shouldn’t have been funny, funny: suicide bombers, terrorism, the Paris riots and the unfinished Wembly Stadium all were all featured.
So far so good... Only one verbal attack from the comedian, parents left unscathed, chortling and seemingly unperturbed by the use of the f-word.
They fared less well during Steve Day’s set. Steve is Britain’s only profoundly deaf comedian “well if there are others I haven’t heard of them”. He lost his hearing at the age of 18 and spent years pretending he hadn’t - preferring to be thought of as stupid.
“After all,” he asked us, “how many of you have had sex with a deaf person?” A solitary hand in the audience crept up.
“How many on you have had sex with a stupid person ?.. Exactly.”
Steve explained that usually when he plays halls the stage lights mean that the audience are in darkness. “I can’t see them, I can’t hear them, I go home, the wife asks me how it went, I say it was a knockout... I don’t know.”
The Queens Hall lighting meant that he could see this audience all too clearly and his attention soon alighted on our table. The photographer’s be-striped jumper, combined with “a slightly younger and glamorous lady” (my mum) and my dad, led him to deduce that Pembrokeshire is actually a haven for ex-rainbow stars and that he was performing to Rod, Jane and Freddy. Laugh ? I nearly...
Steve’s set was honest open and inspirational: it ranged from the joys of fatherhood, pebbledash in Port Talbot, silly degrees at university, the Boots effect (intense patronisation on buying hearing aid batteries), the politics of disability, sign language and subtitles.
When he got onto the sign language for “muff diving” I had to spit my drink back into its glass (classy chick eh?), before I choked with laughter. Mr Day was seriously funny; at one point I had a stitch from the hysterics he induced.
So fun for all the family? Well they certainly enjoyed it and we laughed together more than we have in ages.
The next laughter lines is on Thursday May 11th. Bring your folks. But don’t sit stage left.
THIS month’s Span Laugh Lines Comedy Club turned out to be something of a family affair.
I decided to take my wee sister with me as well as our fabulous pembrokeshiretv photographer. The outing soon snowballed to include the senior Hotchins, and a car full of us set off to Narberth’s Queens Hall.
On my way there, reservations started to set in... What if the comedy was too near the knuckle? What if the language was terrible? What if my progenitors just plain hated it and demanded to be taken home during the interval?
The tension increased further when we arrived at the hall. We had got there early enough to get a table (hoorah), but late enough so that that table was the one directly stage left. The heckle or be heckled table. The table that always seems to be directly in the comedian’s line of fire.
The evening started smoothly enough as compere Kevin told us about his train journey down from Pontardawe, sessions with an imaginary girlfriend, mused on the logistics of legalising certain substances and shoplifting in Lidl.
With a bit of audience participation worthy of any pantomime in the land he then introduced the evening’s first act, Andrew Bird.
Mr Bird started his set by pacing the stage explaining how he didn’t have a joke to start off with he would just wait and see what came to him. He didn’t have to wait for very long. The flash bulb from pembrokeshiretv’s photographer saw him jump about three feet and launch straight into it.
“Bloody hell,” I thought you were a speed camera there,” he exclaimed. “That’s another three points on my license.”
He went on to reprimand our photographer that he could have been epileptic and then changed tack telling the audience:
“We bought him down here, we take him to every gig, life on the road and as many Ginster’s pasties as you can eat.”
And so it was, the curse of the heckling table had begun to take effect but would the parents remain immune? They certainly did for the rest of the likeably laddish Andrew Bird’s set, as he expounded on adventures in Karaoke, coupledom, stag weekends, hangovers, boy racers, gangsta rap and pissing in other people’s houses.
The comedian smattered the set with current events and made things that really shouldn’t have been funny, funny: suicide bombers, terrorism, the Paris riots and the unfinished Wembly Stadium all were all featured.
So far so good... Only one verbal attack from the comedian, parents left unscathed, chortling and seemingly unperturbed by the use of the f-word.
They fared less well during Steve Day’s set. Steve is Britain’s only profoundly deaf comedian “well if there are others I haven’t heard of them”. He lost his hearing at the age of 18 and spent years pretending he hadn’t - preferring to be thought of as stupid.
“After all,” he asked us, “how many of you have had sex with a deaf person?” A solitary hand in the audience crept up.
“How many on you have had sex with a stupid person ?.. Exactly.”
Steve explained that usually when he plays halls the stage lights mean that the audience are in darkness. “I can’t see them, I can’t hear them, I go home, the wife asks me how it went, I say it was a knockout... I don’t know.”
The Queens Hall lighting meant that he could see this audience all too clearly and his attention soon alighted on our table. The photographer’s be-striped jumper, combined with “a slightly younger and glamorous lady” (my mum) and my dad, led him to deduce that Pembrokeshire is actually a haven for ex-rainbow stars and that he was performing to Rod, Jane and Freddy. Laugh ? I nearly...
Steve’s set was honest open and inspirational: it ranged from the joys of fatherhood, pebbledash in Port Talbot, silly degrees at university, the Boots effect (intense patronisation on buying hearing aid batteries), the politics of disability, sign language and subtitles.
When he got onto the sign language for “muff diving” I had to spit my drink back into its glass (classy chick eh?), before I choked with laughter. Mr Day was seriously funny; at one point I had a stitch from the hysterics he induced.
So fun for all the family? Well they certainly enjoyed it and we laughed together more than we have in ages.
The next laughter lines is on Thursday May 11th. Bring your folks. But don’t sit stage left.