The final part of this stand-up comedy mix was hosted by Irish comedian Dara O'Briain, best known in the UK for his presenting of satirical panel show Mock The Week...
Dara O'Briain
The affable Irishman has a calm and confident approach, although his act didn't get enough time to build and was generally hobbled by obvious gags that seemed outdated (are we still amused by Brokeback Mountain jokes?) The best stuff revolved around the Irish being terrible SCUBA divers and Englishmen's sneery attitude to the Eurostar. His patter about IT job titles was amusing, too -- but overall this was an average performance from a comedian I know can do better.
Stephen K. AmosStephen's not a familiar face to most people -- but was his recent appearance on Have I Got News For You timed to coincide with this? Anyway, Stephen has some great material, and a similar style to Omid Djalili (in that he starts the show with as a broad foreign sterotype, before settling into his natural British brogue).
He was pleasantly self-deprecating ("I'm in the shit stage of an afro...") and picked on audience members without taking it too far, and making them uncomfortable (a pet hate of mine.) A lot of his material was constructed around racism (Coon cheese, accent difficulties in the US, "nig nog"), but also tapped more universal truths (vest and pants in P.E, business class on planes, twin sister myths.)
Overall, I was impressed with Stephen K. Amos, as he's not a stand-up I've seen very much of. He had a good conversational style and was easy to listen to, and definitely had that all-important ability to make you empathize with him...
Frankie BoyleThe final act was Dara's Mock The Week co-star, Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle. The somewhat gawky Scot has made a name for himself in recent years, for being quite fearless in his scathing approach to comedy. To his credit, he had an abundance of material (much of it one-liners), that both shocked and impressed.
Scottish-based jokes about Braveheart, the Glasgow terrorist attack and the insanity of sending pale ginger Scotsmen to war in Iraq, quickly gave way to more general targeting: London Olympics, Spice Girls reunion, geriatric mothers, anaesthetic condoms, train toilets, ID cards, and gay dads. The jokes came thick and fast, although I'd heard many of them before – in previous stand-up shows featuring Frankie, or on the aforementioned Mock The Week.
Frankie has an enjoyable danger to his material and delights in taking things right to the edge of decency, or grossing out the audience with clever descriptions (like a pregnant old woman's baby essentially bungee jumping whenever she went to the toilet.)
If you've not seen much of Frankie, chances are you'll bust a gut laughing, although I personally found 70% of the act to be reheated off-cuts.
And that concluded this third run of Live At The Apollo, which has been a welcome treat for Monday nights. Only a few of the dozen comedians really disappointed, with most of the acts reminding TV audiences what their "proper job" is – as we tend to think half these people are paid to sit on comedy panel shows.
But, please, enough with the Jack Dee jokes! We know he used to be the host of the show previously, and Dara even told a joke about someone texting him to ask "where's Jack Dee?" -- for about the third time this series.
17 December 2007
BBC1, 10.35 pm
