The Green Goblin Blog

1. It is cheap
2. It is local
3. You can ALWAYS get seats at the front, even when the gig is sold out (like tonight). Comedy gigs always fill up from the back...

Tonight Punt and Dennis were here for a warm-up gig, something which I enjoyed more than, say, a mid-tour polished performance. They weren't finished yet - some jokes were being tested for acceptability and the running order was still on a clipboard rather than in their heads. All this and the banter between them when things didn't go as planned really made the pair appear more human.

Spoiler warning

If you plan to see any of their 32-date "Stuff and Nonsense" tour then don't read the rest as it will spoil the surprise.

Here are my favourite (or at least memorable) bits of the concert (in no particular order):

1. In a sketch about the health service, MRSA was how the middle class pronounce pop star Morrisey. Didn't necessarily work for everybody so I don't know if it will make the final cut. The photo below was part of a Florence Nightingale sketch but I think it would make a good "Caption Contest":
   
2. Brand names - why do people pay extra for brand name medicines when the supermarket versions, containing exactly the same molecules, are far cheaper? But then, they aren't experts on drugs like Pete Docherty. On the subject of supermarkets, apparently Tescos now do mortgages - Punt only found out when he received one as an alternative to an avocado in his Internet delivery.
3. Immigration and passports had a large chunk of time. Punt and Dennis proposed (and demonstrated) how much easier it would be if passports were musical and identified your country of origin when you opened them.
4. Bird flu - Bill Gates is happy as at last there is a virus that Windows couldn't catch (strangely everybody but me laughed at that one). H5N1 - the only virus with its own post code. Dennis reported how the RSPB spokesmen's comments about the whooper swan that was found dead in Fife last year were censored by the BBC. The explanation that the infected bird, flying from Germany, must have "felt crap" and landed was changed to "felt grotty" instead.
5. Sir Walter Raleigh - the person who has killed more people that anyone else in history through bringing tobacco and potatoes to Europe.
6. The veloceraptor walk - always a winner.
7. Biggest cheer was during the "history of broadcasting" when Dennis reached the 1990s - the notorious "Milky Milky" period.
8. Below is the winter Olympics impression of landing from the ski jump:
   
   
9. The queen has had 160 birthdays - no, the pedant inside me cried, she hasn't as the official birthday didn't kick in until after she was crowned.
10. Because the stage is so small, they couldn't just march off-stage in darkness when the lights went off between sketches for fear of crashing into the tables and chairs.

Labels: Comedy

# posted by John Breakwell @ 9:31 PM