John Cooper is probably
best known for his work as comedy character Danny Pensive (who describes
himself as a “professional idiot”) for which he has received critical acclaim,
so I jumped at the chance to see his latest show ‘Confessions of a WordPress
Fanatic’.
Cooper describes this show
as a “comedy experiment” as he moves his stand-up routine into the area of
comedy storytelling and although this is his first venture into this area,
there was little evidence of this as he came across as a ‘seasoned pro’.
The subject matter for the
show is WordPress – which for those who are not aware is as Wikipedia describes
it “a free and open-source
content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL”. In simple terms WordPress is the world’s most
popular software for creating and maintaining websites – the popularity being
mainly due to the fact that it is free but also the fact that it is easy to use,
they constantly release new features and updates and you don’t need to be a
computer genius to create a very professional website. More than 30% of all websites out there on
the internet are created using WordPress.
Cooper tells us about his experiences of meeting
Mike Little, one of the original founders of WordPress, at a convention in
Manchester where he asked for volunteers to do a short talk on their
experiences. Despite being something of
a novice, Cooper had been so surprised by Little’s welcoming nature that he accepted
the challenge and prepared a 15 minute talk – although he later admitted that
his natural desire to reach a new audience as a comedian was also partly
responsible. It was during the 15 minute
presentation, not intended to be at all funny, that Cooper realised he had
stumbled upon a new show.
On the face of it this subject would appear to be a
very niche area, appealing to web developers and website designers but that
simply isn’t the case. John Cooper is a
natural storyteller and the way he navigates through his experiences without
complication is brilliant. He avoided using any technical buzzwords and focused on his hilarious stories which just
happen to be about using website creation software.
John Cooper has added a new date for this 1 hour
show on Sunday 29th July and I urge both users of WordPress and
those who have no idea what it is to go along and listen to a man who is
clearly destined for greater things in the world of comedy.
Reviewer - John Fishon – 5/7/18
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