Ready for a new term, new semester and new decade, the Last Laugh has returned to its old, or “traditional” time of 7:45 on a Sunday. Though all available metaphors would probably suggest that this is a step backwards, I for one am definitely glad about the change; once again I can associate my weekly comedy fix with lazy Sundays, the post-coital glow and the laid-back relaxedness of the end of the week, rather than the heavy buzz of the midweek evening. A long, slow joint, if you will, instead of a heart-straining ecstasy pill. Plus, pints are now even cheaper. These people know how to treat you right, folks.
Compére John Warburton is the only act I was already familiar with, and he was funnier than I remember seeing him before. He seemed to revel in having an intelligent audience, lampooning philosophers and wondering on the merits of David Hume versus René Descartes and whether the best philosophy genuinely is “hopefully it won’t be shit”, mixing unashamed intellect with complete irreverence, coming across as pleasantly pretentious at the same time as wonderfully endearing. My only complaint would be that, due to first act Nick Doody’s extremely long set, Warburton’s stage time was cut dramatically, and his early exit in the first half was an uncomfortable sort of coitus interruptus.
Nick Doody’s set made up for this though, and despite its length, it never seemed to drag, and nothing at all felt like filler. And despite the rather unflattering impression you may pick up from his name, his material was brilliantly quirky, bad taste and intelligent, ranting mercilessly about pet hates such as children, the middle-class, and most vehemently, the children of the middle-class. Doody built on Warburton’s irreverence and turned it right up to eleven, describing in intimate detail the metaphysics of religious morality, our construction and usage of it, finally concluding that every possible purpose it serves can be far more easily summed up with the simple phrase “Don’t be a dick.” His material is openly offensive, not quite taking bad taste to its extremes, but coming pretty close with tales of abandoned children and thoughts of teabagging certain members of the front row, all delivered with an amused, detached carelessness. Despite this though, he manages the perfect balance between offence and charm, something which many comedians fail miserably at and are only able to leave the audience with a bitter taste in their mouths and no laughter to make up for it. Doody avoids this fantastically; his taste is like chilli chocolate- he’ll kick you in the palate, but he does it so well that even if he offends you personally, which I’ll admit that he did to me at points, you can’t help but love him anyway.
John Warburton’s second set gave him far more time to take his audience down increasingly bizarre trains of thought, showing off hilarious new material and driving his set with audience interaction, which gave his act a new freshness which made it all the funnier. His irreverent style returned with a vengeance, eventually coming to the point where the question “If you could finger a small animal, what would it be?”, directed earnestly at a member of the audience, seemed completely natural, its ridiculousness not even noticed until he suddenly broke the illusion by wondering “What the fuck are we talking about?”, hammering it in with supreme hilarity.
Headliner Tony Law did a seemingly impossible feat and opened up with a Hallam joke that was actually original. I honestly did not think that such things existed. The rest of his set did not disappoint, linking realism with a strange surrealness, ranging from the slightly cruel (everybody loves playing snow games, like ‘How many women in inappropriately high heels fall over on the ice?’) to the brilliantly silly (uses for potato waffles- snow shoes for weasels, anyone?) to the strangely curious (the strange consequences of confusing stigmata with stomata). The transition from real to surreal was deceptively natural, avoiding both the mundane nature of observational comedy and the alienating force that more surreal forms of comedy sometimes show, and leaving you suddenly wondering where these undeniably odd suggestions could possibly have come from. It rings as both escapist and relatable, and always undeniably hilarious. Plus, anyone who thinks Formula One should feature loop-the-loops is a winner in my book.
Certainly a night of pure brilliance to begin the semester, which I hope will continue right through. And considering that the line-up of the next show features the fantastic and fantastically wrong Seymour Mace, I’m sure that it will be.