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The Review - THEATRE by RICHARD OSLEY
Published: 8 May 2008

John Hegley

Camden Theatre | Ten Best Stand-ups review | Bloomsbury Theatre | Jerry Springer | John Hegley

TEN BEST STAND-UPS
Bloomsbury Theatre

DRY and deadpan, lefty comic Stewart Lee knows where he’ll be every Friday night for the next month: the Bloomsbury Theatre.
The writer of Jerry Springer: The Opera has picked 10 of his favourite working stand-ups and composed a mini-festival, bringing them on two-by-two.
It started last Friday with old pal Simon Munnery and Johnny Vegas, unnecessarily billed here as a mystery guest.
Vegas blustered his way through an hour’s worth of audience humiliation, undercutting Lee’s sensitive rambles with a wild stage-dive into the front rows and as many knob jokes as he could muster.
But the same joke, however audacious, was always going to be a little thin when stretched over an hour slot and Lee was the real star quality here, even if much of this material was rehashed from old tours.
Best of all was his skit about how an ignorant generation has grown up mistaking the lazy slogan “health and safety gone mad” with that other lazy label “political correctness gone mad”.
Cue confused grannies coming out with lines like: “You can’t go in the bath with an electric cooker any more – in case a Sikh sees.
“They won’t let us drink tea in the doctor’s waiting room any more, Stu, in case a Muslim spills it.”
There are cheers when he takes aim at the easy target of Richard Littlejohn and oooohs when the jokes sliced a little close to the bone.
Throughout, Lee proves he is as skilled in delivery and timing as he is in humour.
He’ll be back
MC-ing this Friday to introduce Kevin McAleer and William Adamasdale.
The treats continue throughout May and look out in particular for Josie Long.
Fridays, until May 23
020 7388 8822

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