Dave Johns, Harry Denford, Jo Enright; MC Rudi Lickwood
@ Jongleurs, Nottingham 12.1.01

(review by Jon Horne 2001)

© Touch Nottingham (internet magazine and What's On guide)

Loud, slick, and relentlessly corporate: to spend an evening at Jongleurs is to immerse yourself in turn-of-the-millenium British culture, imported wholesale from America, where they clearly know how to put on a show. It is a purely passive spectacle. Nothing is left to chance. The funniest thing I experienced at Jongleurs did not happen on-stage: instead it was a poster, plastered in accessible spots around the club (next to the bar, above the urinals in the Gents'), and it was a list of the night's acts, presented as a menu. At the bottom of the list, it said: "Tonight's show manager is ROBIN."

You get the idea. Like the 'train manager' on a Virgin Express, Robin is the guy whom the customer turns to if anything goes wrong. The buck stops with Robin.

Of course nothing went wrong. Before the show, Come on Eileen and Young at Heart provided a nice, safely-80s background to the buying of drinks. The four comedians performed creditably, and got as much of a reaction from the customers as their billing suggested they would. Table after table of works' parties were well satisfied, a great deal of expensive lager was drunk, and 'yellow tri-cut Jongleurs nachos' were consumed by the bucketload.

The first thing which strikes you is the deafening volume. There was no need for the works' parties to shut up, because the PA overwhelmed them. When Rudi Lickwood took the stage, I half expected him to shout: "For those about to rock, we salute you." He didn't; he just shouted: "Good evening Nottingham," like the solid professional he is. The job of an MC is to warm up the crowd for the night's acts, whilst the temptation of an MC is to upstage the acts. In an attempt to do the latter, we got ten minutes of "women ain't the same as us, know what I mean?" material, interspersed with well-rehearsed comments about Lickwood's status as the only black man in the room ("I feel like a prune in a bowl of rice pudding"), all of it delivered with practised timing and nothing in the way of warmth. A really good MC (I'm speaking here as someone who used to go to Frank Skinner's club in Ladywood) makes the audience want to like the acts that he has chosen for them. Rudi Lickwood was just another London stand-up, doing a turn on the provincial club circuit.

Jo Enright is also a London stand-up, despite a number of overt switches into a Birmingham accent, to illustrate some moderately-funny routines about Londoners' attitudes towards Brummies. Most of her jokes are about being short, shy and from Birmingham, and about working in Safeway's in order to pay her way through drama school. Periodically slipping into character, all of her characters are given a purse-lipped 'prissy woman' expression, to differentiate them from Jo Enright, the character. To be fair, some of the material was very good; I found myself laughing to myself during the interval. But not during the set: Jo Enright is a fine comic writer, but a nervous performer, who gave the impression of wanting to pick up her fee and go home.

Harry Denford has two jokes. One of those jokes is South London, Denford's alleged home - it's violence, Philistinism, and poverty. He stands at the back of the stage like a Gumbie, dripping gold and showing off his belly, ranting like a taxi driver. 'Only Fools and Horses' did this joke so much better, because it did so with heart, and an eye for farce. Harry Denford has no such ability to make his subject matter likeable. In the end, there's nothing very funny in a middle-class drama school wannabe, taking the piss out of people whom the audience is never likely to meet. His second joke is that he is not really a South Londoner, but a failed air-traffic controller. Thus we get to hear his accent change from poor to posh in a matter of seconds, and he does the hands-around-the-microphone Tannoy voice, so beloved of comedians making jokes about British Rail.. Actually, this was quite funny at first, but then he kept on doing it. I kept wondering how good he might have been if Jo Enright had been writing sketches for him.

Dave Jones is a white, Geordie Rudi Lickwood. His material is misogynist with hints of male self-loathing; he occasionally bullies the women in the audience, but more often picks on the more awkward-looking men. Some of his jokes made me laugh. Most of them didn't. The works parties lapped it up.

Some people become comedians because they have something funny which they have to get off their chest. Others choose "stand-up" as a career option, as part of the acting profession, and they go to drama school to learn how to do it. All of those on stage last Friday fitted into the latter category. Jongleurs, with its corporate logos, its megawatt PA, and its Full House Platters during the interval (£28 for four), gave them a perfect platform on which to perform, and an appreciative, equally corporate audience.

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