Ok, so I’m not going to Scarborough today because I’ve got stuff to do today like laundry so let’s get this blog written too.

So one of the things I did yesterday was to go to the cinema to see The Cottage, which promised to be an “hilarious” comedy horror film. It lied to me. For starters there was an over abundance of the c word and gratuitous swearing just for the sake of it. Also, Jennifer Ellison got on my nerves, being the main perpetrator of the swearing, but also cos of her accent; there’s just something about the Scouse accent that irks me. Also, it seems the people who shot it don’t understand the concept of white balance as scenes ranged from having a pinkish tinge to having a lovely yellow/orange tinge. Oh, and Reece Shearsmith’s character had the most unconvincing bald spot I’ve ever seen.

I dunno, I reckon my main bugbear is that it was neither funny nor scary and for a comedy horror film that’s obviously a bad thing. I mean sure, it had its moments with regards to the comedy but it wasn’t consistent. Maybe I was looking for a new Shaun of the Dead, in which case, I certainly didn’t find it in The Cottage.

Right, so the next thing to do was to go to York to see Russell Howard with Alick and my mum. I’d only managed to drag my mum along by describing Russ as being “kind of like Ross Noble”. Turns out she thought Russ was was, to paraphrase, quite good but he’s no Ross Noble.

Anyway, I digress. We got there about 20 mins before show time and headed to our seats at the end of the front row. Hmm, actually I feel like I should point out one of the funniest things I saw that night first. We went to park the car at Clifford’s Tower car park and it was just full of geese (Canda and Greylag if you’re really interested). One car was trying to get out but it was obvious it was going nowhere fast because there were a pair of the geese in front of it just slowly waddling down where the car wanted to be and no amount of horn honking was getting them to move. Clearly these geese owned the car park.

Right, where was I? Oh yes, I’d just sat down. It was at this point when I met a slightly tipsy Alena and Nadine and got a present of some Kinder Eggs and Lindt goodies. Hooray for chocolate! This reminds me, I need to get to a Tesco cos they have an offer on Kinder Eggs, selling 12 for £4.

Anyway, Russell’s support was Steve Hall, one of the members of we Are Klang. I wasn’t impressed by him at all, as with most support acts I’ve seen. The only support act I’ve ever seen stand out is Matt Kirshen, who went on to the final ten in the last series of Last Comic Standing, which is a comedian’s equivalent of X Factor in America, which says a lot if you ask me. Clearly the idea of the support act is to make the main act look good, which Steve Hall did flawlessly. I mean getting the audience to shout out their favourite swear word? That seems like something only a hack comedian would do.

Now, what to say about Russ that I haven’t already said before? I said this about him when I saw him at at Edinburgh, “self described as ‘a child telling you about his trip to the zoo’. With his ADD Russell Howard finds it quite difficult at times to stick to the topic at hand, which makes it even more enjoyable to watch, especially when you’re taken into his world with ‘radiator pants’ and ‘human buckaroo’.”

This is essentially the same as what I saw last night albeit with slightly different jokes. He still makes me giggle. I’ll quickly compare him to his Mock The Week colleague, Frankie Boyle. With Frankie, when he did a joke I’d heard before on Mock The Week it seemed to didn’t quite have the same impact as when I’d first heard it, but with Russ it’s completely different as the anecdotes still had me giggling. I think it’s something to do with body language, the way Russ leaps about the stage and pulls ridiculous faces; it all adds charm to his routines.

I’m not really in the mood to write much else on the matter so I won’t. I guess all that’s important is that Russ was brilliant and I want to see him again with new material. Yay.