Stage @ AltLinc Comedy Club

Once again AltLinc ventured to the Zing comedy night, as they so frequently do on Mondays.                   The place was once again packed as myself and Nathan settled ourselves into our seats at half past eight. Organiser Ed Carfrae was, as usual, preparing the lighting and music to ensure that every drop of excitement could be squeezed from this weeks comedy club. Once everything was in place and the audience were assembled in front of the stage, Ed started up the applause as our MC for this evening took to the stage and started up the revelry – with no shortage of energy, it has to be said. Our vibrant and slightly manic MC for the evening was Bobby Freeman. Bobby was a loud and lively host and those first few introductory moments were pretty intense – it turns out that you can have too much enthusiasm. Nevertheless, he was warm and welcoming and, using the time-honoured show business device of competitive audience-splitting, stirred the audience into a state of serious excitement as he welcomed the first comedian of the night to the stage.       Alex Holland didn’t so much hit the stage as meander serenely onto it. His delivery was distinctly dry and witty, and his material was based out of how mundane and bland he thought his life was. However, It wasn’t at all sardonic, sarcastic or dull. Quite the opposite in fact. He smiled as he recounted about how he had chased a girl through a park in an attempt to rescue her from possible attackers, only to realise he looked like an attacker himself. He had great success with a serious of anecdotal jokes about his dreams – most dreams, he said, were spontaneous, mad and unexplainable. He told the audience about how he once dreamed that he found a brush, and even been fortunate enough to have a dream in which he was doing his weekly shop. He executed his material really well, and got the night off to a flying start.     Next up was Alexander Noble. We’ve seen Alexander here on several different occasions, and he seems to be a real hit-and-miss comedian. Some nights he’s on fire and some nights, well, he’s not. Unfortunately for Alexander, there wasn’t so much as an ember at this weeks comedy club. He bravely tried a new style of comedy – something we haven’t seen from him before – and this new style revolved solely around one-liners. Tricky at the best of times, one-liners proved a step too far. Apart from one stunningly delivered and totally unprecedented joke (“How to The Simpsons know if they’ve got jaundice?”) his act fell flat, and barely a titter escaped the mouths of the audience. Better luck next time, Alexander.     The final act before the headliner was Daniel Whyley. He was good. VERY good. He had a presence that left the audience at ease and thus more receptive to his japery that his forerunners. With consistently funny material that covered a wide range of topics including threesomes and Steep Hill (though not in the same joke) his set flew by. A bit more tongue-in-cheek than the nights earlier comedians, but I think that is what the evening needed. Top quality stuff.     Tonight’s headliner was Paul Ricketts who, I have to say, was a very singular comedian. He could only have been about twenty years older than the crew of AltLinc, but he spoke as if he was the product of a bygone era. His material was brilliantly funny, but also very insightful and thought-provoking. He talked about sexual discrimination in the workplace – particularly discrimination against homosexuals – and still managed to derive comedy gold from this murky topic. His would often diverge from his rehearsed set and interact with the audience, which proved to garner more laughs than some of his actual material in places. A very interesting and amusing performance.