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slemslempikeThis week our pub quiz team did not get any money, but I did win us a gallon of beer by knowing to within 3 how many episodes there have been of Have I Got News for You.
Yesterday Jen and I went to see Sean Hughes. This was a mistake. We had been in two minds about whether or not to get tickets, and Jen had kept asking me if he was still going to be funny. I had assured that I thought he probably was, and then just as he came on stage I whispered to Jen that I'd changed my mind and thought he wasn't going to be any good. THIS WAS A JOKE. But he really, really wasn't any good. I'd never seen him before, but Jen saw him about 16 years ago, and said he was really good then.
When he came out he started doing bits of audience banter, including asking two women if they were lesbians TO HILARITY!! I mean, he just went there, before even asking if they were related, or friends!!! Mostly though it was just that he wasn't funny, and he didn't really have any jokes. It was just saying "isn't getting older rubbish" and "isn't this programme weird". The audience seemed to find him very funny, which was good in a way because it would have been even more embarrassing if the room was silent, but also just baffling. It was proper laughter too, like they had been surprised by something.
We left in the interval. I've done that only once before, when I went to see a truly dreadful am dram Shakespeare revue and my grandmother was so embarrassed that she'd taken us to it that she insisted we leave. Generally if I've paid for something I sit through it, but having said that most of the comedy I see that I don't like doesn't have intervals in the same way. And he said that he was going to do two halves of 50 minutes each and I was so embarrassed for him by the end of the first half that I asked Jen if she really wanted to stay.
He didn't seem to like the audience much either. I've written before, I think, about the fact that comedians in Lancaster seem more baffled by the heckling/audience interaction here than they do when I've seen shows in other places. And there was a bit of that, but also he just treated people he spoke to like they were really stupid, doing nasty voices for them, and it was uncomfortable.
I looked at some reviews online and they suggested that the second half would have been better. I'm still not sorry I left - I do think that he might have been having a bad night, because I can't believe that anyone could see the sort of performance that we did and come away with anything but sympathy. Which sounds hidsouesly patronising, but is how I feel.
The previous night I'd been to see Comedy on Campus with my friend Kerstin. I've been a few times before. Once it was fairly routine student-gig stuff about sex from a male point of view, and once it's been a woman I found very funny and a man who had a lot of presence but not much material. This week it was Andi Osho and Jon Richardson, compered by Jimmy McGhie. I liked him quite a lot, he made a joke about people who stay at uni doing one sabbatical position after another, and mimicked a man saying "I'm not leaving yet, I haven't been women's officer", but the joke was more about a man wanting to do it rather than the position being stupid. He identified a pocket of particular laughed as emanating from people sitting around the current women's officer and didn't take the opportunity to make fun of her for that, but was generally all round quite nice.
Andi Osho was good too, though she did a bit of "ooh, aren't I naughty" about doing "non-politically correct" material. Jon Richardson was as lovely as ever. It was mostly from his last show, but with added bits on hating the South because he was in the lovely North.
Today I went to the cinema to see Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., the 1966 Doctor Who film starring Peter Cushing. It was being shown in the gallery room of the arts cinema, with sofas and bean bags instead of chairs. There weren't very many people, mostly people in their 20s/30s, but also a man and his 6/7ish year old son, and two girls in their teens.
The Doctor (who introduces himself as "Doctor Who") is travelling to 2150 with his young granddaughter Susan and his niece Louise. They somehow go via 1960s London and accidentally pick up policeman Bernard Cribbins who is trying to deal with a shop robbery. When they get to 2150 London (I don't think they ever said why they were going) it is all in ruins, with a Sugar Puffs poster on the wall near the TARDIS. They get separated, a Dalek rises out of the Thames. The Doctor and Bernard Cribbins are captured by the Daleks and taken aboard a flying saucer, while Susan and Louise are taken into the disused underground where the resistance are making bombs to throw at Daleks.
It was funny - sometimes on purpose, with Bernard Cribbins trying to work in synch with the robots to escape detection, the Doctor missing Susan's message that they've gone to Watford on the back of the door and heading off to Bedfordshire (where the Daleks are diging a hole to the Earth's core). And sometimes less deliberately, like the humans wrestling the Daleks to the floor, and the Daleks' bomb which will break open a fracture in the crust being diverted down a second shaft with a few planks at the bottom of a long drop. Rather than smash straight through this, the huge bomb instead goes into the place under the surface of Bedfordshire from where the Earth's poles get their magnetisation. This getting blown up has no effect on humans, of course, but the Daleks are sucked down the hole, through (paper) walls and slightly crumpling. It was great.
Yesterday Jen and I went to see Sean Hughes. This was a mistake. We had been in two minds about whether or not to get tickets, and Jen had kept asking me if he was still going to be funny. I had assured that I thought he probably was, and then just as he came on stage I whispered to Jen that I'd changed my mind and thought he wasn't going to be any good. THIS WAS A JOKE. But he really, really wasn't any good. I'd never seen him before, but Jen saw him about 16 years ago, and said he was really good then.
When he came out he started doing bits of audience banter, including asking two women if they were lesbians TO HILARITY!! I mean, he just went there, before even asking if they were related, or friends!!! Mostly though it was just that he wasn't funny, and he didn't really have any jokes. It was just saying "isn't getting older rubbish" and "isn't this programme weird". The audience seemed to find him very funny, which was good in a way because it would have been even more embarrassing if the room was silent, but also just baffling. It was proper laughter too, like they had been surprised by something.
We left in the interval. I've done that only once before, when I went to see a truly dreadful am dram Shakespeare revue and my grandmother was so embarrassed that she'd taken us to it that she insisted we leave. Generally if I've paid for something I sit through it, but having said that most of the comedy I see that I don't like doesn't have intervals in the same way. And he said that he was going to do two halves of 50 minutes each and I was so embarrassed for him by the end of the first half that I asked Jen if she really wanted to stay.
He didn't seem to like the audience much either. I've written before, I think, about the fact that comedians in Lancaster seem more baffled by the heckling/audience interaction here than they do when I've seen shows in other places. And there was a bit of that, but also he just treated people he spoke to like they were really stupid, doing nasty voices for them, and it was uncomfortable.
I looked at some reviews online and they suggested that the second half would have been better. I'm still not sorry I left - I do think that he might have been having a bad night, because I can't believe that anyone could see the sort of performance that we did and come away with anything but sympathy. Which sounds hidsouesly patronising, but is how I feel.
The previous night I'd been to see Comedy on Campus with my friend Kerstin. I've been a few times before. Once it was fairly routine student-gig stuff about sex from a male point of view, and once it's been a woman I found very funny and a man who had a lot of presence but not much material. This week it was Andi Osho and Jon Richardson, compered by Jimmy McGhie. I liked him quite a lot, he made a joke about people who stay at uni doing one sabbatical position after another, and mimicked a man saying "I'm not leaving yet, I haven't been women's officer", but the joke was more about a man wanting to do it rather than the position being stupid. He identified a pocket of particular laughed as emanating from people sitting around the current women's officer and didn't take the opportunity to make fun of her for that, but was generally all round quite nice.
Andi Osho was good too, though she did a bit of "ooh, aren't I naughty" about doing "non-politically correct" material. Jon Richardson was as lovely as ever. It was mostly from his last show, but with added bits on hating the South because he was in the lovely North.
Today I went to the cinema to see Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., the 1966 Doctor Who film starring Peter Cushing. It was being shown in the gallery room of the arts cinema, with sofas and bean bags instead of chairs. There weren't very many people, mostly people in their 20s/30s, but also a man and his 6/7ish year old son, and two girls in their teens.
The Doctor (who introduces himself as "Doctor Who") is travelling to 2150 with his young granddaughter Susan and his niece Louise. They somehow go via 1960s London and accidentally pick up policeman Bernard Cribbins who is trying to deal with a shop robbery. When they get to 2150 London (I don't think they ever said why they were going) it is all in ruins, with a Sugar Puffs poster on the wall near the TARDIS. They get separated, a Dalek rises out of the Thames. The Doctor and Bernard Cribbins are captured by the Daleks and taken aboard a flying saucer, while Susan and Louise are taken into the disused underground where the resistance are making bombs to throw at Daleks.
It was funny - sometimes on purpose, with Bernard Cribbins trying to work in synch with the robots to escape detection, the Doctor missing Susan's message that they've gone to Watford on the back of the door and heading off to Bedfordshire (where the Daleks are diging a hole to the Earth's core). And sometimes less deliberately, like the humans wrestling the Daleks to the floor, and the Daleks' bomb which will break open a fracture in the crust being diverted down a second shaft with a few planks at the bottom of a long drop. Rather than smash straight through this, the huge bomb instead goes into the place under the surface of Bedfordshire from where the Earth's poles get their magnetisation. This getting blown up has no effect on humans, of course, but the Daleks are sucked down the hole, through (paper) walls and slightly crumpling. It was great.
