Is anyone else seeing him on his current tour? If you are, I hope he's significantly improved from his show in Blackburn last night - he was terrible. Absoutely woeful in fact.
If anyone wants to know the running order of characters I'll let you know (I don't want to spoil it for anyone who may be going tough) but, as a basic, the material just wasn't funny. Coogan tried a couple of new ideas but, in the main, relied on very similar material to that which he used in his last tour 10 years ago. And, just to rub salt into the wounds, he relied far too much (probably 50% - 60% of his show) on reading prompts either written on his hand or on cards which were made to appear part of the act. This made the show less of a comedy event and more of a lecture - it really did lack that performance feel. I would be disappointed at a comic at a local stand-up night doing this. For a recognised and renowned artist to resort to this (when we'd shelled out around £37 per ticket) was an absolute disgrace. Although I still regard his earlier work (Paul Calf's video diaries & all the Partridge output) as briliant, he's gone some way to losing a number of fans last night (there were 14 of us overall and we all shared the same opinion). Cheers Steve - I feel severely short-changed.
And apologies Aaron - I did mean to post this in the 'Other British Comedy' section. My anger is clouding my judgement at the moment...
