For those of you who don’t know Paul Foot, you should imagine Noel Fielding but with extra lunacy and madness – he was a regular panellist on the TV show Never Mind The Buzzcocks but has been a stand-up comedian for many years. His latest show, titled “Image Conscious” was written for the Edinburgh festival earlier this year but don’t read much into the title – they are meaningless in terms of the show content.
Tonight’s show had a support act which Foot introduced himself from backstage – an introduction that was just the first taste of the lunacy we could expect from him later in the show. His introduction lasted several minutes, and included a full explanation of the facilities available at The Lowry complex. The support act was Malcolm Head, someone who has seemingly been supporting Foot for quite a few years – Foot announcing that we were very lucky to see him again as the support act because “Head’s career had stood still for quite some time and he hadn’t progressed to bigger and better things”.
Malcolm Head had a slow and considered approach to comedy, almost announcing the jokes before he delivered them – an agenda of comedy he told us about before he started with his 20 minute slot. He used very subtle observations in his act which were very well delivered in his laid back style, he also shared some of his witty poems with us. I liked Malcolm Head, his style is original and in particular the way he sets up his jokes but the laughs he generated were unfortunately a little bit like his act – understated and restrained.
Paul Foot arrived on stage after a short interval dressed in his familiar jacket with full shoulder pads, padlock hanging from his belt loop and full mullet. He immediately went into his show which involved several subjects that annoyed him, which you may think is standard practice for a stand-up comedian but Paul Foot does not deliver comedy much like anyone else. He ranted and raved about subjects such as Greg Wallace on Masterchef, the Falkland Islands conflict of the 1980s, former snooker champion Steve Davis and Match Of The Day presenter Gary Lineker. Whenever he mentioned a subject that made him mad, he would arch himself forward and move his body up and down as though he was having some kind of breakdown – this saw the audience in fits of laughter each time he performed this move.
Foot’s routine then took a bizarre twist even for his standards as he approach a member of the audience on the front row and rambled through a scenario of the urban orgy that took things to a new level. This involved mostly talking about the strife and troubles of being the host of an urban orgy and the effort that goes into the organisation of such an event. At one point he mounted the audience member in question which for any other comedian might be a step too far but for Paul Foot this seemed completely inoffensive and almost normal. There was a point in the show where someone on the second row had to pay a visit to the toilet which caused Foot to approach those sat in the area around him – asking if he had some kind of medical issue or whether he had simply miscalculated the time from the interval to the end of the show. This was absolutely hilarious and he continued this as the guy came back to his seat – this was all improvised comedy and for me it was his best work of the night.
All in all I think Paul Foot is a massively talented comedian and I admire his work. He is a little too ‘off the wall’ and anarchic for my own personal taste but I suspect a lot of his rants and quirks are scripted almost down to each word. I do wonder whether he could leave a little more to improvisation as this part of his act tonight was simply brilliant.
Reviewer – John Fish
on – 27/10/18
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