Chris Ramsey, Chorley Little Theatre, 27 November 2012

Chris Ramsey likes Chorley. He was back at the Little Theatre within 18 months of his last visit and has already booked a further gig at the venue in April of next year. With his Feeling Lucky tour he was bringing a brand new stand up show to town and on more than one occasion in front of a full house told the audience how pleased he was to be there.

Hailing from South Shields and most recently starring in the BBC comedy Hebburn set in the North East, Ramsey often laughs at his own jokes because, as he admits, he doesn't always know what he's going to say until a second before the words come out of his mouth.

In a 95 minute set, he focused on how lucky the audience were to be there in the Little Theatre, and how genetics and historical chance had brought them all to that point. In his own case, having his Dad drop him on his head as a two year old and then Ramsey almost drown himself in a swimming pool whilst on holiday in Spain were particular adventures that he was lucky to survive.

Although there were a series of themes that developed from his central argument about luck, the main theme itself could have been better developed and in truth the set flagged at one or two points.  However Ramsey’s engaging style of delivery kept the attention of his predominantly youthful audience and kept the laughter flowing.

The climax of his act wove his account of a sky dive and the recurring theme of his Dad's taste for practical jokes together. If you are a nervous flyer, Ramsey's description of preparing to leap from a small aircraft ('it was like a van with wings') will not make you any more likely to want to board an aeroplane.

Ramsey made headlines earlier in the year for being accused of breaking into his parents’ house, and his photograph on the mantelpiece and his driving licence carrying his parents’ address did not immediately convince the constabulary of his innocence.  He had something to say both about Russell Brand's predilection for female company and Roy 'Chubby’ Brown's reputation for telling racist jokes, neither of which he seems to appreciate.  He also had to admit to being kicked off Sky TV’s Saturday morning programme Soccer AM for making inappropriate comments.

But Ramsey is hardly controversial.  His material is no more filthy than that of many modern stand ups, although he possibly bases more of his material around using public lavatories than most.  Ramsey admits to not using public toilets if he can avoid them, but has various stories about encounters with lavatory attendants with whom he seems to have the unhappy knack of encountering, usually immediately after they have cleaned their establishmentand are leaning on their mop admiring their work and when he is desperate to use their facilities.

Ramsey engages with his audience, laughing at their jokes and making barbed comments as appropriate that take the crowd along with him.  He didn't  fill the Chorley Little Theatre in 2011.  In 2012 it was deservedly packed out for his return.  Grab tickets for his April appearance while you still can.

Jenny Eclair, Chorley Little Theatre, 5 November 2012

Jenny Eclair's Eclarious tour brought her back to Chorley Little Theatre for the second time in under two years.  She could sell out bigger venues but would appear to like the intimacy that Chorley's home of comedy provides.

After a nervous start, in which her delivery was noticably rushed, she settled into her stride.  She gave us a taste of her novel, which was nothing more than middle age porn with its references to sumptuous furniture, before prowling the stage and launching into an exploration of the issues facing women of a certain age.

Eclair is from Lytham St Annes, and whilst her familiarity with the North West is welcome, as the audience was immediately able to picture her portrayal of her no nonsense mother, the story about what she got up to in the bus shelter in Lytham is less so. How she got such big biceps is a gag that was told on her last visit and was one of several jokes that she told last time she played Chorley and which should have been rested.

She was funnier with her newer material, with much of her act focused on the perils of being over 50, whether that is lack of bladder control or having to hold onto one's breasts when running to stop them flopping about.  She is unimpressed with Madonna's propensity to flash her nipples when other women of a similar age are more inclined to slump on the sofa drooling biscuit crumbs from their mouth.

Jenny doesn't really do sex, and doesn't know why her partner Geoff is still with her given her overall decrepitude.  Her preoccupation is with how her body, and those of all women of her age, is changing, whether it's her hair falling out or the shape of her knees.  These are revealed to a disbelieving audience to be rather, er, manly.

Eclair does not have any pretensions. At home she prefers to spend the day in her night dress if she can, and doesn't like unannounced casual visitors because it means she has to put her clothes on when she could simply stay in her knickers. Small children are particularly unwelcome because of their tendency to make a mess.

Eclair attracts a predominantly female audience - 90% of the Chorley Little Theatre crowd were women - and they loved her take on post menopausal life.  But the men too were laughing out loud.

Another sell out gig at Chorley Little Theatre and a happy comedy audience.

Rob Rouse, Chorley Little Theatre, 10 November 2012

Being related to a comedian can't be easy.  Les Dawson's mother-in-law was the butt of many of his jokes, and stand ups who use observational material will inevitably be drawn to the people around them as subjects.

It seems doubtful that Mrs Rob Rouse realised that her bladder and bowel movements were going to feature quite so prominently in his act when she first started dating the comedian, who was visiting Chorley Little Theatre on his 'Life Sentences' tour.  Not that Mrs Rouse is the only member of the household whose toilet habits get a mention since the bowel movements of Rouse, his children and one of their friends all get discussed.

Chorley Little Theatre was barely half full for this exploration of the Rouse family's bodily functions, but those audience members who came wrapped in their coats to brave the slightly chilly temperature were soon warmed by the laughter Rouse generated.

After an introductory joke about Saturday evenings being a comedian's Monday morning and how it was important not to dive straight into work in case you make a mistake such as 'Chorley police tasering a blind man with a white stick', Rouse turned to his main themes for the evening.

One was his four year old son, who features heavily in Rouse's act, whether it's the tale of him appearing at his father's bedside at 5.30am to begin the endless stream of questions that a growing young mind needs answering or bursting into the lavatory with his potty to share an intimate moment with Dad and let the postman see the two of them having a bowel movement.

Rouse's at the time unborn daughter also features, with the effect of her her penchant for poking his heavily pregnant wife's bladder acted out on stage.  Her birth at home is also described in graphic detail, and one hopes that Mrs Rouse was given the opportunity to vet the material before her husband performed it to a wider audience.

Life as a parent is acutely observed, with his son's testing of his father's patience by prodding a lump of cheese with his finger bringing flashbacks for anyone who has raised a toddler.

A member of the audience was invited to drink a cup of tea that may have been made with Rouse's wife's breast milk ('but to tell you the truth I really can't remember') and sportingly took up the challenge, while the audience's reaction to the idea was 'milked' for all that it was worth.

Rouse is witty, filthy and thoroughly engaging as a comedian but definitely not for the under 16s, and you probably wouldn't want to be sat next to your gran at a Rob Rouse show either.  He wasn't fazed by the sparse audience and created an intimate atmosphere with his warm manner and enthusiastic way in which he threw himself around.  (For a 'stand up', he spent quite a proportion of his act on the floor.

The Chorley gig was filmed for a DVD and audience members present on the night have been promised a free copy.  When they drop through the letterbox it'll be a chance to show their comedy loving friends who decided to give the show a miss that this genuinely funny man deserves a bigger audience.  And a chance for Mrs Rouse to consider whether she wants her husband in the delivery room if she chooses to have another baby.

Greg Davies, Chorley Little Theatre, 6th October 2012

Greg Davies is a big man, as he was happy to admit to a packed Chorley Little Theatre when his The Back Of My Mum's Head show rolled into town.  Describing his body shape as resembling that carved by a four year old from a big piece of ham, he confided to the audience that the waistband in his underpants had snapped before he came on stage and that, whilst we might not witness the event, his underpants might fall down inside his jeans at some point in the evening.  Being so large had a number of other drawbacks, including the fact that he'd destroyed two toilets at home in one day.

Having shared his wardrobe malfunction secret, and engagingly got the audience on his side, this former teacher (perhaps best known for playing the teacher Mr Gilbert in The Inbetweeners) revealed his agenda for the evening, helpfully set out on a flip chart.  Davies did not go so far as to tell the crowd when they should laugh but such information would anyway have been superfluous, as they were laughing from start to finish.

The show was a well paced mix of story telling and audience interaction, with Davies' observational comedy taking random incidents in his life and weaving a narrative from them, such as the east London taxi driver who called Davies 'Big Bird' on picking up his fare and, having riled his passenger from the off, then got into an argument with him about what the ingredients of a pie are.  'It's pie, isn't it?'

Davies' top five involuntary noises, with the Pick of the Pops theme tune helpfully hummed by the audience, included a reference to a friend caught spying on his sunbathing neighbour by his monster of a wife.  Davies disguised 'Darren's' real identity to spare his embarrassment only to accidentally blurt out his real name, which is now known only to Davies and 250 theatregoers and staff.  Apart from the laugh it got, the mistake was ironic since Davies' theme was how adults need to censor what they're thinking in a way that children don't.

Davies' parents feature in much of his material, with his mother's concern about Davies being bitten by a fish whilst he was up a mountain so baffling to him that he produced a script so that the audience could help him act out the telephone conversation he had with her and his father.  His mother's 'it's not normal' refrain was reflected back by Davies to highlight how everyone says or thinks things that perhaps they shouldn't.  His friend Nicky's confession at a university Truth and Dare party that he'd fondled his sleeping grandmother's breasts was one example, whilst the hospital consultant asking Davies if there was going to be another series of The Inbetweeners whilst performing a cystoscopy on him was another.

Davies tells a story with a suitably conspiratorial air.  His family's camper van being followed through the American countryside at night with his parents terrified they are about to be killed only for Davies' then 12 year old sister to save the day by hanging out of the back door waving a plastic machine gun to scare their pursuers away has everyone on the edge of their seats, intrigued and amused.

The show concluded with the audience joining Davies on his guitar singing a song about a bonsai tree called 'I wish I was a bonsai tree'.  Music and comedy does not always work, but as a means of concluding a very funny set Davies succeeded in creating the sense of a camp fire singalong and making the audience feel they had been part of something special.

Davies' support was Ed Petrie, better known to younger readers as a presenter on BBC children's television shows.  Petrie suggested he had been asked rather at the last minute to accompany Davies on the tour, a statement which was supported by a short and slightly stumbling set that concluded in him forgetting his last joke.  The Chorley audience gave him a sympathetic hearing but the belly laughs were reserved for Davies.

Morrissey, Manchester Arena, 28 July 2012

When they erect statues to the heroes of modern Manchester, Sir Alex Ferguson is probably guaranteed a place in the pantheon and so, if results continue to go their way, is Manchester City's manager Roberto Mancini.  A spot is possibly also reserved for Morrissey, who carries the flame for his home city around the globe.  But whilst there may be 'no place like Hulme', he archly informed the audience at the Manchester arena that whilst he had recently been given the keys to the city of Tel Aviv, no such honour had yet been forthcoming from the good burghers of Manchester.

It may be that heroic status will be denied Morrissey because of his apparent willingness to grasp the  nettle of controversy whenever the opportunity arises.  His drummer's bass drums sported the Israeli national flag despite the mixed feelings some fans may have about him touring there.  If that were not provocative enough, the band were sporting 'We Hate William and Kate' t-shirts and the singer acerbically remarked that he hoped his audience had survived the 'moronic Diamond Jubilee'.

His audience of devotees lapped it up.  If Morrissey was not complaining about something, then that would suggest that their hero was not well.  As it was, he seemed to be in fine form, launching into You Have Killed Me and Every Day Is Like Sunday before moving on to I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris and Ouija Board, Oiuja Board.

If anything, the band were too muscular, with plenty of mid set guitar histrionics wailing over material that was unfamiliar and bludgeoning the crowd into submission.  The audience wanted to singalongaMoz but this was a request the self styled most curmudgeonly man in rock seemed disinclined to indulge.  For much of the middle of the set he belted out less well known songs, making for a leaden twenty minutes or so, whilst the big screen video on factory farming that accompanied Meat Is Murder did nothing to lighten the mood.

But finally Morrissey relented and opened his box of magic tricks. The fairy dust that he can sprinkle over any performance is, of course, selections from the Smiths' back catalogue.  After years of denial, these songs have increasingly featured in his concerts in recent years and the first to be unveiled was a pulsating How Soon Is Now, which ended on a throbbing synthesizer riff, to be followed later on by Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me before the show concluded with the massed choirs of the arena belting out the words to Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want and an encore of a vibrant Still Ill.

His legions of adoring fans will continue to follow him, but if Morrissey wants to attract gig goers other than those who merely wish to worship at his shrine, he needs to polish up that set list.