When the doors only open fifteen minutes after the stated start time, it doesn’t bode well, but this show is worth the wait. Sarah Bennetto kicks the gig off, explains the plan is stories, rather than just jokes, and announces the audience’s short story competition – tonight, it has a maximum of ten words, and is about meeting your heroes. She tells her own embarrassing celebrity story.
James Dowdeswell is the first guest, who enthusiastically talks about his childhood, growing up over a pub, and loving the delivery lorries. Birthday boy Wil Hodgson’s story is from his current show, but the tale of working in Iceland (the shop, not the country) somehow takes in abusing old women, the cold room, dogging, and dirty song lyrics.
Terry Saunders is up next, telling us he was ‘pretentiously wacky’ at twenty, and weaving a detailed yarn of meeting Michael Palin a number of times, at numerous book signings. The audience provide plenty of laughs in the storytelling competition. Bennetto banters with the writers as she reads their tales of They Might Be Giants, Griff Rhys Jones, John Craven, Roald Dahl, Bobby Davro, Jim Davidson, Richard Whitely, Terry Gilliam, Uri Gellar, Gerry Anderson, Jimmy Saville, and Santa. Uri Gellar wins.
The next act is a first time storyteller, Luke Wright, who talks about his home town Braintree, and performs a poem about his very first girlfriend. Bennetto now explains we’re waiting for the arrival of Robin Ince, so Tom Bell fills in for a few minutes, exuberantly commenting on the night’s friendliness, and disappears into a story about the five senses doing a charity gig.
Finally, Robin Ince arrives, and talks about his manic gigging while in Edinburgh for a few days, being on Mock the Week, Edinburgh taxi drivers, odd theatre shows, parenthood, and sneaking academic comments past Richard and Judy. His main target at the end is Winterval, and correcting the untruths said about this festivity – while trying not to look like a maniac.
The nature of these on the fly stories means they do sometimes stop, rather than end. This gives a slight lack of completeness, but the fluidity and live, fresh feeling more than make up for this. It feels more cheating to give us a complete tale taken from the regular act, and the audience certainly value the idea that the tale they just heard has never been told before, or not in that way.
Both an insight into comics’ pasts, and a fun place to be, it’s a pity this refreshingly different show is only running for a few nights.
[Gill Smith]
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