Chris
Addison, star of TV's 'The Thick Of It', played to an almost full
house at Chorley's Little Theatre with an act comprised of very new
and very old material, and something for all tastes. The comedian,
completing the final leg of his first stand up tour in five years,
was so keen to make sure that his act contained fresh material that
he was tweeting for facts about Chorley an hour before he went on
stage.
The
result, after a gag about putting up prices by £2.50 in order
to put off students from buying tickets, was a hot off the presses
analysis of life in Chorley, with a dissection of the contents of a
butter pie and an admission that his rider for the gig was "two
cans of Coke and two Chorley cakes." Jokes about the Mormon
church and Botany Bay followed. Only his story about his middle
class origins being exposed if he was sliced open ("cut me in
two and you’ll see I’m middle class. I haven't got middle class
written through me but you’ll see my dad come and sew me up - he's
a doctor!”) creaked a little, having been part of his act for ten
years at least.
After
a 35 minute opening set he returned for a full hour in which he
deconstructed his middle class life growing up in north Manchester
and more recently south east London. Gags about the Queen Mother and
the Pope worked less well than vignettes about married life in
Bromley, such as his wife ordering a new lampshade online in the time
it takes him to break one and clear up the debris, and her uncanny
ability to find something in five minutes that he’s failed to
locate in two hours (“She could find Osama Bin Laden. He’s
probably on our kitchen table under a piece of paper.”)
A
highlight of the second half was his suggestion that chickens are
frustratedly saying something other than cluck, despite what human
ears may hear. Attacks on people who wear Ugg boots and the lack of
insight shown by people who say "the thing about me"
rounded off an energetic performance by a comedian who isn't quite on
the A list but for whom a venue the size of the Chorley Little
Theatre is lucky to capture.
He
may be 38, but Chris Addison is a still rising star of comedy.
