Justin Moorhouse, Chorley Little Theatre, 16 March 2013

Justin Moorhouse is fat.  But not fat in a bad way.  He’s more of your affable Hairy Biker kind of fat, the sort of genial fat bloke who’d elbow his way past you in his eagerness to get to the cream cake counter at Greggs and crack a gag in the process such that you wouldn't mind him beating you to the last eclair.

And Moorhouse is comfortable with his size.  It's not glandular or due to big bones.  It is, as he tells a packed house at Chorley Little Theatre, because at home the biscuits are next to the kettle.

Food is a subject close to Justin's heart and at different points in his act the biscuits, a sausage roll and a Ginster's steak slice all feature.  But it isn't just about food, and in a two hour set he also talked about his relationship with his teenage son, his eight year old daughter's obsession with Catholicism and whether, when the rest of the country was facing civil unrest, riots in Euxton and Whittle-le-Woods were ever a realistic proposition.  His conclusion?  They weren’t.

He has a go at teachers in a ‘I’m not having a go but –‘ kind of way which even the teachers in the audience could not help but laugh along at, before - and using an image that will be instantly familiar to everyone who's ever been on a Sunday outing with their family - recounting a childhood visit to Botany Bay that came to an abrupt halt when his father refused to pay the admission.  His own visit to an owl sanctuary as a parent witnessing bored dads trying to get a 3G signal in order to watch the football on Sky on their smartphones also resonated. 

Moorhouse wasn’t afraid to be edgy – his jokes about Paralympian swimmers and the Asian guy running his corner shop had the audience wondering whether they dare laugh or not while he showed that beneath the affable exterior lies an experienced comic when he dealt firmly with a drunken heckler who, having slept through the first hour of his act, started to shout incoherently.

A good comedian draws you into their world, settles you into your seat with an introductory gag or two and then takes you on a journey looking at things you might not have thought you were going to spend your evening contemplating.  So it was with Justin Moorhouse.  Gay sex, teenage masturbation and paedophilia were probably not topics that the audience were expecting to be listening to as they sat eating their pre theatre madras in the curry houses of Chorley, nor where they thought Moorhouse would be taking them when he stepped onto the stage and blinked at them from behind his spectacles.  But that’s where he took them.  And they loved him for it.

Sean Lock, Chorley Little Theatre, 11th March 2013

Sean Lock brought his Purple Van Man tour to Chorley Little Theatre as a work in progress.  The almost full theatre was treated to an hour and three quarters of material, some of which was clearly taking shape on stage as Lock delivered it.

Lock’s laconic delivery will be well known to TV viewers as one of the stars of 8 out of 10 cats.  Voted amongst Britain’s Top 20 comedians by Channel 4 viewers in 2010, and arguably the first comedian to play Wembley Arena (he was the support act to Newman & Baddiel at the time and so preceded them on stage) Lock has sold out three nights at The Lowry in Salford with his current tour so getting him to Chorley Little Theatre was quite a coup.

And since the tour was due to get fully underway less than two weeks after this show, the only real sign that the Chorley audience wasn’t getting the full article was a flip chart on the side of the stage that Lock occasionally referred to as an aide memoire.

His act comprised musings on a number of topics, such as the cost of food at the cinema, the state that most cinemas are left in by the departing audience, and the questions that children ask.  Lock has three young children and questions flow all day at a rate of one a minute, so whether it’s okay to lie to children (it is – better to say that there are monsters under the bed than tell them about the monsters out in the real world) was one subject around which Lock chatted for around ten minutes.

He also spent several minutes expressing his views on Sir Richard Branson (not repeatable in case I get sued!) and considering whether Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones or Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Irons would make a better sleeping bag companion, which gives a flavour of how left field some of Lock’s thoughts are.

Lock has a reflective style, and throws in the odd old fashioned gag every few minutes accompanied by an Eric Morecambe style shuffle to illustrate the showbiz nature of his delivery.  It may have been work in progress, but for the Chorley audience it was job done.

Terry Alderton, Chorley Little Theatre, 4 February 2013

When you go to see a stand up comedian it's reasonable to expect that the act will stand up and tell jokes.  But with Terry Alderton what you get is a running, jumping and falling over comedian with at least two voices in his head and a range of sound effects that would put the BBC's radiophonics workshop to shame.  It was entertaining and non stop, and the term 'stand up comedian' really doesn't begin to describe Alderton's act.

Much of the humour on display at Terry Alderton's gig at Chorley Little Theatre was visual.  The venue was barely a third full but an enthusiastic audience saw this Essex stand up deliver a tour de force.  Billed as 'work in progress' some of the gags fizzled out, yet it was still interesting to see and hear how the character of Liam at the Apple Store in the Trafford Centre is developing.  Similarly, Alderton's discovery of a vibrator in his wife's bedroom drawer was a theme that he appears still to be working on, as he returned to it several times during the evening.

One of Alderton's stage tricks is to turn his back on the audience and pretend his inner voices are talking to him with the audience able to eavesdrop. This device works both as a means of delivering a joke but also as a way of parking one that hasn't quite caught light.

At times the sketches - they are too unformed and flow into each other too much to be called gags - seemed to go nowhere in particular, but it is not due to a lack of material on Alderton's part.  If anything, watching his performance was at times like flicking through the channels with a TV remote and only staying with each programme for a few seconds.

The performance is full on.  Alderton is a ball of energy and a brilliant mimic too, whether it's pretending to be two feuding neighbours in Northern Ireland or a call centre operator in Mumbai.

Alderton was supported by affable Geordie Seymour Mace, whose act included his take on a visit to Botany Bay and an enthusiastic performance fulfilling a 'lifelong ambition' to be a backing singer with Gladys Knight & The Pips.

All in all, a good night's entertainment and the Chorley audience left feeling they had their money's worth. At £8 for a ticket this was excellent value for a comedian who has already been on the small screen in various guises and is determined to make it as a stand up and an equally funny support act.

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.

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.