The Last Laugh

Thursday night is comedy night at the Lescar, and my friend Andrew had been nagging me to go for years, so this week we finally got the necessary circular tuit and went, and well worth it it was too. We got there slightly early, but that was no great hardship with some excellent Timothy Taylor’s Landlord on tap. The show kicked off more or less on time at nine o’clock with an excellent warm up from the resident compere Toby Foster – it seems that everybody who has ever appeared on Phoenix Nights is now destined to compere stand up comedy nights for the rest of their comedy careers. He had an excellent rapport with the audience, particularly the girl celebrating her birthday who was sat near the front with an unopened present. He got some good comedy mileage out of the gifts, which turned out to be a chick lit novel and a packet of friendship tea (“Stalkers Tea more like. Ingredients – includes rohypnol”) – bet she wishes it had been a dildo now …

The first act was Susan Murray, who was born in Scotland and raised in Wolverhampton (“because my parents wanted me to sound like a twat”). Some of her material was deliberately controversial, but it all went down well with the crowd, particularly the stuff about internet dating which struck a chord with a rather drunk woman sat in front of us called Diane who was offered a ten minute open mic spot next week by Toby Foster.

The headline act was the excellent Paul Sinha whose act was based on his experience of being fat, gay and asian, and also being a football fan. Tales of doomed stag weekends, being mistaken for a fellow squaddie and of being asked some thug one night – “Oi! Do you fancy my bird?” – and wondering how to tell the bloke that he was the one he had his eye on. Painfully funny, and it’s refreshing to see a gay standup who isn’t in the least bit camp.

So, an excellent night out, and one that I’ll definitely be up for again.