FESTIVAL DIARY DAY 3 - Four shows and a seminar...

Saturday was rather a hefty day of comedy-viewing...

It began unreasonably early, with a 10am seminar at DMU's Pace building, in which a panel of comedy luminaries discussed the development of live comedy from the origins of the Alternative Comedy movement at the end of the 1970s (or the beginning of the 80s - this was a matter of some contention), through the 90s 'Comedy is the new rock&roll' era to the current environment of megastar arena tours and the lucrative panel show circuit, and ended by asking what's in store for the future of live comedy. It was a fascinating two hours, often dominated by the always lively and forthright Kate Copstick, who left the audience in no doubt as to her views on the current crop of TV comedians - stating in her typically reserved manner that she could shit in a bag, put an 'As seen on Mock the Week' sticker on it and people would flock to see it live. Also on the panel was Comedy Store founder Don Ward, who revealed his plans to record shows at his clubs and screen them in theatres across the country, as well as starting to stream them live on the net. This was greeted with some concern from the panel, who wondered whether this sort of thing would stop people bothering to go out to see live comedy in the smaller venues - as if to ask why would people go out and pay money to see half-formed sets by inexperienced acts when they can stay at home and watch top acts live in HD for free. This fear was tempered, though, by the feeling that there is perhaps too much live comedy around at the moment, and the good acts and venues would always survive, whilst the less competent would have to give up or find their own audience online.

Alfie Brown - boundary-pushing

After such a substantial and satisfying comedy breakfast, I headed out to see four very different shows at different venues. First up was Alfie Brown at Just the Tonic. Very much a work-in-progress this one, with Alfie frequently checking his notes and trying out plenty of half-formed material, some of which delighted the afternoon audience, some of which just petered out. He clearly wants to be a boundary-pushing comic - at times it seemed like he had just sat down and written a list of potentially offensive topics to talk about, and then tried to come up with controversial viewpoints on each one. So he discussed paedophilia, the benefits of a dictatorship, use of the N-word and a prolonged segment on the female private parts. Whilst this sort of thing works for Frankie Boyle who seems every bit as nasty as his jokes, Alfie just seems too nice a person to be doing the really offensive topics with any real conviction (but maybe that's why he gets away with it - he's likeable enough to avoid the kind of hatred that many people feel towards Mr Boyle, and his opinions aren't nearly as nasty). There were some great moments in there, like his vision of appearing on Live at the Apollo and strangling himself whilst masturbating and crying; or the image he created to ridicule the idea that some men find blood more disgusting than poo. The set ended strongly despite a mid-show dip in focus - with a bit more refinement and perhaps less reliance on trying to be controversial, this could be a very enjoyable show once it's fully formed.

Norman Lovett -  shambolic yet endearing

The next act was much more gentle, as 66 year old Norman Lovett, best known as Holly from Red Dwarf, took to the stage at the Looking Glass, to take us through a rather shambolic yet totally endearing hour of tangential ramblings and inspired prop comedy. Much of his hour was taken up being distracted by things - the mic was "a bit shit", the extractor fan as too loud, the people moving around upstairs were very heavy-footed, he even took a phone call mid-set from his elderly downstairs neighbour Irene. It quite often felt like you were in the company an eccentric older gent who just enjoyed talking to people and wasn't concerned about cramming lots of gags in. He rambled on about The Big Bang Theory and the Sugababes in a surprising amount of detail, frequently started conversations with audience members that didn't really go anywhere, and seemed to suffer a little from how hot it was in that small basement. He did find some genuine comedy gold in his seemingly bottomless bag of everyday objects to use as props - he found entertaining ways to use clothes pegs, shower caps, rubber bands and recycling bags, and seemed to delight in telling the audience how little he'd paid for each one. Overall, despite the lack of solid gags, it was all very endearing and gently entertaining, as if you were popping in to see a dotty old relative who's just glad for the company. The feeling was mutual.

Antony King - delightfully twisted

This was followed by a quick dash over to Kayal to see Anthony King, who despite having been ill for the last couple of weeks, produced a thoroughly enjoyable set of typically dark and twisted songs, interspersed with musings on the idea of normality, and how odd it seems to him, as well as poking gentle fun at the online profiles of internet dating site users. He doesn't have the greatest singing voice, but this is rendered irrelevant by the clever turns of phrase in his songs, the understated presentation and the delightfully twisted nature of the material.

Benny Boot - quirky and mischievous

And finally the last leg of today's comedy journey brought me to the Belmont, to see Benny Boot unfortunately having the first 15 minutes of his set utterly ruined by four incredibly drunk people on the front row who simply would not shut up, creating a very uncomfortable atmosphere in the room. To everyone's relief they decided to leave early on, and from then on the whole room relaxed and was treated to the remaining 45 minutes of enjoyably quirky ideas and playfully mischievous thinking. The only questionable aspects of the show proper, were the contrived framing device of pretending to be recording the show for an as-yet uncommissioned DVD, and the guy appearing behind him every so often with comic-style thought bubbles and the imagined opinions of his judgemental parents. These 'amateur theatre'-style moments stopped the show dead in a few places, and seemed unneccessary given the high quality of the actual stand-up material on offer.

And that's yer lot! Day 2 out of the way, and boy did I sleep well last night after such a busy day. It's another full schedule of laughs today - I'm heading out this afternoon to catch the Socks In Space Matinee at Kayal, then at Just the Tonic, Johnny Vegas is the star guest on Mark Olver's Dancing About Architecture, followed by Markus Birdman at the Belmont and finally Rob Deering at Just the Tonic. See you tomorrow!