| HEADLINERS COMEDY CLUB CHISWICK Will Watts visits Chiswick's new comedy venue
Simon Fox was much more like it. Although he had perhaps a slightly over-conventional approach - for example he held up a bottle of Nightol and invited us to laugh at the 'may cause drowsiness' warning label; this is surely just a minor variation of the 'this packet of nuts may contain nuts' joke that has been doing the rounds since before Edwina first hung up her jacket over the frosted glass panel of the bolted door of the Whips' Office - he thought quickly on his feet, and turned a bit of backchat to his advantage. Best gag: his observation that Holland 'has got one of the lowest crimes rates in Europe… but, there again, they have legalised everything'.
The next item divided opinion in our party sharply. My friends Dave and Mike thought
that Roger Monkhouse was the best yet. Here is the minority report. Mr
Monkhouse is a proponent of the 'aggro slaphead' school of comedy, a style founded
by the little gargoyle man who used to be on They Think It's All Over (he has
now been replaced, as eventually everybody will be in everything, by Woss). This
style dispenses with mere jokes, wit and humour and gets its laughs by a kind
of verbal bullying. Mr Monkhouse began by seeking and getting a heckler, a man
who identified himself as 'No Comment'. Mr Monkhouse set out to ridicule Mr Comment,
but Mr Comment admirably held his nerve under fire and, when sneeringly asked
what he did for a living, crisply replied: 'I am a w*nker'. This was hardly brilliant,
but it was cleverer than anything Mr Monkhouse had thought of, and it got the
audience on Mr Comment's side. After an empty few seconds Mr Monkhouse abruptly
aborted his programme of teasing Mr Comment.
Personal: If anybody picked up Mike's daybook by accident - it's a red A4 hardback containing a load of cartoons - please could they hand it in at the George as it is sorely missed. Will Watts First Laugh - Opening Night at Headliners More
Comedy Night at the Park Club Comedy Legend Frank Carson to perform at the Park Club October 7, 2002 |
A
great innovation: Headliners had a proper MC, by which I mean one who announces
the act and gets off pronto. He also pleased me by using the correct, easily penetrable
MC code. 'It is a tradition here at Headliners' [ = 'this is what we meant to
do last week'] 'to give the first slot to a relative newcomer' [ = 'This boy is
NBG']. So it proved. Steve Williams was a young Welshman who gabbled his
material, who had as the main plank of his act a dreary mime of interfering with
(can you guess?) a sheep, and who need not detain us beyond the end of this sentence.
The
finale was Dave Fulton, (left) a laconic, shaggy American who ambled on
with a bottle of Budvar in his hand. Like his beer, Mr Fulton was reliable and
calming and not too fizzy, and he flushed the taste of the previous act away.
Mr Comment, flushed with over confidence from his previous victory, attempted
another heckle… but was smartly hissed back to silence. Freed from interruptions,
Mr Fulton drifted us to the end of the show on a sea of simple, workmanlike gags.
Right near the finish he said, mock bewildered, 'You British guys! You drink soooh
much! You guys drink like the pub is gonna close at eleven.' Only it was past
eleven and the George had shut, so the joke was on us. Ha bloody ha.
