Gig Report: Leicester Comedy Festival 2019
Published: Thursday 21st February 2019
Our stand-up editor made a whistle-stop trip to the Leicester Comedy Festival, saw eight shows, and a bit of everything.
It's a few years now since Leicester was suddenly the UK's most talked-about city (its sports teams and stars seemed to win everything in 2015/16, Lineker showed his pants, Richard the Third turned up in a car park) but every year, in February, it's the place to be for UK comedy.
The Leicester Comedy Festival is awash with big, brilliant and budding names across the month, and is a fine way to spend a few days, for out-of-towners. On weekends especially you can zip between gigs all day: I arrived on Friday afternoon and left on Saturday night, managed to catch eight shows and could easily have squeezed in a fair few more, if the pubs and eateries weren't so darn welcoming, too.
Those eight shows were as mixed a bag as you can imagine: romance, rants, tentative beginnings, emotional endings, a fair bit of ice dancing and talc. Lots of talc.
Friday
We begin with a sure-fire banker: Paul Currie's Hot Donkey, which was a lot of savvy people's favourite show at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, and you can understand why. Not only does it feature some of the funniest set-pieces you've ever seen - kicking off with the now legendary, earworm-inducing Panda Hands - but it's proper poignant, in places. In fact, as Currie posted afterwards, a local illustrator loved the show so much, she went home and drew it:
Leicester plays a pivotal role in the UK comedy calendar, as a lot of shows both begin and end here. Tonight is the epic Viking funeral for Regeneration Game by conspicuously Northern duo the Delightful Sausage, although it might never have happened as the show's original venue, The Criterion, had to close unexpectedly; thankfully all of those shows shift to the Apres Lounge round the corner. It turns out to be a full-blown ski lodge, which actually adds ambience to the Sausage's antics, particularly the alfresco freaky-creature bit. Let's hope some of this show does indeed regenerate elsewhere.
Kicking off a new hour is Olga Koch, meanwhile, who got a Best Newcomer nomination at the Fringe last year for the fearless debut show, Fight. This one is early enough to be more workshop than show, which is equally as entertaining when the performer is as personable as Koch. It turns out that there's a slightly odd date going on mid-audience, and at one point our host finds herself breaking off to explain to the female half of it where in the venue the toilets are, which you don't get everywhere. She came back, thankfully.
It's been a splendid first evening, although I've laughed myself into a state of such chronic jaw-ache that rather than head for the show I'd planned on seeing last, we go for a medicinal beverage at the cocktail bar Manhatten 34 and eventually end up downstairs at a show I'd completely missed on the schedule.
Actually by the time the avant-garde outfit Consignia begin, we're into Saturday, but why break up a nice 4:4 split here for the sake of pedantry? Welcome to Dungeness is... well, how to adequately describe it? It's a high-concept happening in lo-fi virtual reality (toilet roll glasses) which otherwise has a similar theme to that Delightful Sausage show - promoting an unlikely town - but which chiefly involves two blokes on a train who are covered in, yes, talc. All admirably uncommercial.
Afterwards, I realise I've barely any cash, so into their donation hat goes an impulse buy I'd made at the bar earlier. And thus I can only apologise if they were confused by the Double Decker.
Saturday
The talcing continues. Short & Curly have chosen a Saturday lunchtime for the final performance of Young at Start, probably aware that it's FA Cup weekend so there isn't a big distracting Premier League game kicking off at the same time: Paul F Taylor knows his football. Apparently Taylor and his comedy wife/actual wife, Rebecca Shorrocks, did much of this show for kids at Leicester last year, but now it's in full effect: warped versions of everything from Big to Neighbours, talc-based special effects, big Orville and Dean finale and a massive horse appendage. They're planning a new outlet for its best bits eventually, which is good news, as - again - it'd be a shame to just lose something so joyfully stupid/brilliant.
Speaking of stupidly brilliant - it's more Paul Currie next, as that's how it often works at Leicester. If you really like an act, you'll more than likely get two stabs at seeing them. Currie is taking his entertainingly tentative first steps with a new show here, Trufficle Musk, but can't throw himself into the full not-for-kids theme as there's one down the front. Still, it's fascinating seeing the Clown Prince of Belfast's process, as nascent bits spin off in unexpected directions (a couple of sections are already fully-formed Currie classics-to-be, in truth). Expect glove gags, sax, genuine issue-raising, and more ice dancing. Heavy concepts.
Also doubling up is the infinitely agreeable Robin Morgan, who really maxes out his time in town. He does a work-in-progress at 3.45pm at Manhattan 34, then at 5pm it's his tour show, Honeymoon, at a whole different venue. It's like doing a two-hour tour show with an interval, but in two different venues, with two different audiences. The hectic schedule clearly doesn't do him any harm though, as he's in agreeably affable form for the second show, in a full room above the very nice Brewdog bar (lovely beer too. Hey Brewdog, let's talk...).
Our festival weekend ends, though, with the much spikier Bobby Mair, who I last saw ably supporting Doug Stanhope at a hefty London venue. Now early on here he sounds delighted to be in Leicester, and the rather nice Cookie club in particular: like Currie earlier, he also looks a bit bewildered by such a full room for such a foetal show, but the new stuff all goes pretty swimmingly. Then it goes slightly awry, some of the younger natives get a bit restless, and suddenly Bobby goes off on one with some scurrilous suggestions about why the locals bothered coming to his gig.
And STILL he gets a fine ovation afterwards. Good audiences in this part of the world. That's why the comedy folk keep coming, every Feb.
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