Reviews

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Review: Stewart Francis

Posted on by Farrah Kelly

You might expect your 99th show would be a rushed affair, lacklustre with dreams of clocking off from the tour. Not for Stewart Francis, who excelled in his final show of his Outstanding In His Field tour.

His torrent of puns and one-liners saw laughter continuously rippling from the audience. With such an act, it can take varying lengths of time for audience members to catch the punchline, creating a lovely atmosphere of chuckles erupting from different seats as people piece together the joke.

Francis’s pace is brilliant – there’s just enough time in between his jokes for you to register what he’s said before the next punchline. If you don’t like one joke, another comes along straightaway.

His routine is full of clever witticisms – “People say fame has changed me, I used to be a self conscious waitress from Swindon” – and flows well. Even when he was heckled in the middle of an ironic listing of all the American presidents in order (no mean feat), he turned the heckle into a punchline.

He left the majority of audience participation to his warm-up act, the spritely Matt Rudge.

Naturally, there were lulls when Stewart’s jokes weren’t as well received as they could have been.His encore almost entirely relied on a comparison between rock stars and comedians that didn’t quite hit the mark, but Francis was extremely adept in snapping back the audience by pulling out some shocking jokes or groan-inducing puns.

The show was punchy, a just-right mix of snappy one-liners, terrible puns and clever irony that provided the audience with some great laughs and a few jokes to tell their mates when they got home.

Originally published in The York Press, 05/12/12.
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Losing my LOTR virginity

Posted on by Farrah Kelly

I was attacked by an orc once. I know that sounds like I’m trying to tell a bad joke, but I’m serious. It’s one of my favourite anecdotes to prove how reliably ridiculous my life can be.

My friend Cat took me a few years ago to London to see Lord of the Rings: The Musical, and the audience-interaction levels were a little too high for my consciousness to manage. Having attempted to nip to the loo in the middle of a battle scene, the (really bloody terrifying) orc-actors had spread out into the audience in order to intimate us all. Wonderful theatre, but not too great for my psychological welfare.

In the strangest stand-off I’ve ever been in, me and Cat tried to outwit the orc in front of the entire upper circle. He took a single step towards us, and we quickly shit ourselves and scurried back to our seats with tails between our legs. Obviously, not feeling embarrassed enough, I decided to pass out. It’s a trick I do when I don’t feel like there’s enough dramatic tension in a moment.

Needless to say, this traumatic LOTR experience was always enough for me. However, upon finding out I’d never seen the films, or read the book, my boyfriend decided I needed “nerding up”, good and proper. So the next few weeks of my life became almost completely about Lord of the Rings. Romance isn’t dead.

We rented each film, extended edition, and watched the lot. Three bags of peanut M&M’s, half a cheesecake, seventy different pause-to-explain-what-just-happened-s, about nine brews and two library rental fines later- it’s over. I’ve seen all of the Lord of the Rings there is to see. And it’s pretty cool. I know I’m a bit late to the party to start reviewing them, so I’ll skip that and get straight to the important shit.

1. How much of a dick is Frodo?! Like, I know you’re having a tough time carrying that cursed demon ring, but can you cut it out with the elongated pauses and middle-distance stares? And getting onto that boat at the end was not cool. Honestly. You destroy one evil warlord-eye, and all of a sudden it’s okay to totally bail on your mates and get on the boat full of cool grown ups. You’re being a sulky, marde-arse weirdo.

2. Legolas is the coolest guy ever. Just casually killing orcs and sliding down stairs on a shield and riding an elephant while simultaneously killing it and just fuck yeah Legolas. He’s also Orlando Bloom. He wins at everything.

3. Kings are douches. If I was a king, I would not ignore Gandalf. I also wouldn’t try to drown people I didn’t like in a landslide of skulls. Nor would I burn my own son alive. Nor would I be a marde arse about my daughter not wanting to live forever on my weird-ass eternity boat.

4. I want everyone to talk like they talk in LOTR. Next time I get on the bus, I’m going to bark at the driver- “Bus-driver, show us the meaning of haste!”.

5. I kinda love Gollum. He’s misunderstood. Why does everyone beat him up?! The only time I dislike Samwise is when he’s being a bully to Gollum. I understand that yes, he does try to murder quite a few people, and that creepy phlegmy voice he does is kinda disconcerting, but that’s because he’s cursed. He clearly has a serious mental health issue, and Gandalf is right to stick up for him. He’s also undeniably adorable at points. I think I’d quite like a Gollum. You know, as a pet.

After watching all twelve glorious hours, I’m kinda really into it. I’ve been watching YouTube clips, and I’m taking out the documentary on the making of Gollum as soon as I get chance. I think I’ve sufficiently been “nerded up”, but Jonathan doesn’t particularly agree. We’ve got to watch Star Wars next. Fabulous.

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Piff the Magic Dragon- Harrogate Comedy Festival review (Yorker archives)

Posted on by Farrah Kelly

“Sometimes I think I need a gimmick”, says the grown man dressed as a dragon. Holding a chihuahua. Who is also dressed as a dragon. The irony sinks in, and the audience guffaw again. Welcome to Piff the Magic Dragon- bringing a touch of magic to the Harrogate Comedy Festival.

Securing his place as a cult favourite on Penn & Teller’s Fool Us, Piff is the absolute last comedian-come-magician-come-dragon you’ll lose in a crowd. Despite his bright and cheery outfit, Piff is anything but a happy dragon. He’s broke, divorced, and his only source of income is Mr Piffles, his slightly less than magical glamorous assistant.

When Piff pulls up a member of the audience to inflict some magic upon, he swiftly falls in love with her and decides he must find out if she is a true princess- via all the usual routes. Does the boot fit? Is she sensitive enough to sense a pea? Can she guess Mr Piffles’ real name?

The show is quite unlike any other. Think a younger Jack Dee in a dragon costume, and with the ability to sneeze fireworks. The entire show is based on anticlimax- thrillingly so. You never quite know whether the tiny dog in a dragon outfit is genuinely about to be shot out of a cannon, or whether there’s another punchline on its way.

The magic tricks were definitely a personal highlight for me- and were brilliantly set up. For instance, in handing a random member of the audience a giant box, he casually remarked that he was sure “it probably holds no relevance to the rest of the show, so you needn’t worry”.

My only minor criticism of the night would be that the magic/comedy balance was slightly off. As a comedian, Piff is great- with excellent timing, good audience banter and some cracking one liners. Yet, short of pretty cool Mr Piffles tricks- one disappearing dog in particular which was very impressive- and a handful of card tricks, there wasn’t as much magic as I would have liked.

Mr Piffles, the bored looking chihuahua, makes a fabulous glamorous assistant. Allowing himself to be laminated, shot out of cannons, and forced to moonwalk (Piff declares him as “Putting the RSPCA into “Call the RSPCA!!”)- he earns his treats by performing adorably.

With a whole host of dragon puns up his sleeve (not to mention the finger puppets or phone aerials), a cheating ex-wife who lives in his briefcase, and a broken heart- all this dragon needs is a hug and a round of applause- which he’ll certainly manage to get at his forthcoming shows.

A night with Piff is an unusual night- how often can you say you’ve seen a real-life adult dragon make his chihuahua levitate, after all? The show is cute, funny and deadpan. Wonderful stuff.

The Harrogate Comedy Festival continues at Harrogate Theatre throughout October



Originally published on The Yorker, Oct 13th ’12, here.

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How being surrounded by books has made me die a little inside

Posted on by Farrah Kelly

Working in a book shop is, in many ways, an ideal job for me. I get to spend time rummaging through boxes of travel guides and novels, I get to scale ceiling-height shelves looking for signed anthologies, I get to have that gorgeous smell of books surrounding me. Basically, I can spend my entire working day nerding out without anyone judging me.

But there is one thing. Working with 20,000 books is playing havoc with how I view the world.

In one way, my faith in hardcopy reading (and therefore humanity) is deepened. I’m stirred into a fuzzy feeling when I see the sheer volume of books that are ordered everyday. Someone, somewhere, is really looking forward to getting that first edition children’s book. A book that was printed in Milan, lent in libraries in Sao Paulo, and packed up in a barn in south of France, is now winging its way to Susan in Dorset. Removing bookmarks from well-thumbed novels, reading annotations from people’s close studies. The romantic in me is having an absolute field day.

On the other hand, I’ve realised how crazy people are. Utterly, utterly batshit. People will read anything.

But before I tirade about this, a disclaimer; I hate that snobbery that inhabits people’s opinions of literature. You know, how anytime a novel gets a film adaptation, everyone’s knickers automatically twist and we all splutter about it not doing the book justice. Or whenever something that The Independent didn’t review gets popular, and everyone guards their precious Waterstones loyalty cards like Twihards are going to soil all the “real” literature in the world. Let’s just man up about books- people like to read, and are entertained by different things. Get over it. You have more important things to troll than a Fifty Shades of Grey Facebook page.

So I’m really really not being snobby about this. This is unadulterated astonishment.

Yesterday I catalogued a book by a German woman from the seventies, talking about her drawings of cats. Seriously. That’s it. Not only does the book exist- and just think what that entails; someone thought the idea of the book sounded neat, someone WROTE that book, and someone else went out and PAID MONEY for it- but the thing is selling for about £20.

It’s even stranger when you have to examine these books closer. Think no one would be interested in 700 recipes that solely rely on the use of a microwave? Think again, there’s four editions of that bad boy. Couldn’t possibly foresee a situation in which someone would want to update a guide to behavioural habits of German Shepards? Wrong. Volume four, now available in shops near you.

The one that really hurt my feelings, though, was the catchily titled “Mathematics in Fun and Earnest“ . I swear to God. Google it right now. If anything was going to put a dampener on my definition of fun (and earnest…), it’s this book.

Now I know that seeing as anyone is allowed to write books, about anything they want, there is a LOT of crap out there. There’s not much I can (or would) do about it. But this really was taking the biscuit. I can’t think of anything worse than having to read that book. As Emma Bennett once eloquently put it, “I’d rather sick up a chip”. I calmly put the book back onto its pile, and tried to hold back the rush of sheer disgust.

My main rule for travelling has been to always overestimate how many books you’ll need. The extra weight in my suitcase will be worth it- I don’t want to end up reading taxi leaflets again like on my last day in Turkey, with seven hours to spare at the airport. But just knowing this Mathematics in Fun and Earnest exists has cemented for me what was already core advice. In no circumstances do I want to be left with a choice of MIF&E or staring blankly at an airport wall for seven hours. I honestly don’t know which I’d choose.

“For the traveller”