Silky is tall, with kind eyes that seem to have the power of x-ray vision. He sits on his stool, looks around the room waiting for something to catch his eye, and begins a free-flowing dialogue with the audience.
The act is largely unstructured, but that in itself brings a certain pleasure to the audience as we join him for a free-flowing performance that is whimsical and silly at times, as well as engaging throughout.
The show is a back and forth between him and the crowd; he engages us (the entire room, not just the front row) with a gentle tone and a genuine interest in our backgrounds. You can’t help but take a warm liking to him, and what is marvellous about his act is that he seems to have an amusing, whimsical anecdote relating to whatever the audience throws at him, drawn from his past travelling and gigging experiences. Perhaps inevitably, he does end up resorting to a number of generalisations to relate his stories to the audience (for example, that Welsh people have a certain way about them), but his jokes are never at anybody’s expense, nor does he ever resort to crass stereotyping.
Silky’s act normally involves a large number of comical songs that he invents on the spot based on conversations that arise during the show. On the night that I attended his performance, Silky was still recovering from the flu and had a hoarse voice, so he sang far fewer songs than usual. But it was clear that he is supremely talented as a musical comedian, with inventive chord progressions and punch lines neatly packed into rhymes that are never strained. The act is largely unstructured, but that in itself brings a certain pleasure to the audience as we join him for a free-flowing performance that is whimsical and silly at times, as well as engaging throughout.
