Ah, my first comedy show of the autumn season and also the first show of Russell Howard’s Dingledodies tour. It certainly had its perks but also its downsides too. Let’s start at the beginning.

Before the gig I had a bit of admin to do at the box office, namely returning my Russell Howard ticket for his second show at City Varieties due to the fact that I’m seeing Tim instead and seeing as it’s sold out and it’s a front row seat I know someone will want it, plus it’d be mean to leave Russell with the one empty seat on the front row.

I also feel I should mention seeing Russell walking away from the venue as we were walking towards it, I think it was for a drink but I don’t take too much notice of things like this. Anyway, I digress, yes?

With that done we headed upstairs to the loo and then on to the bar to grab drinks before heading to our seats. This was when the downside occurred.

Russell Howard still has a support act, despite, no doubt, having a repertoire of jokes that could easily make up two 45 minute slots with an interval in between them. Also, Russell still has Steve Hall as his support act, the same one he had from his Adventures tour. I wrote last time about how I wasn’t impressed with him at all last time, suggesting some of his stuff was a bit hack but I thought I’d give him a chance to see if he could change my mind this time round.

He didn’t. If anything he made things worse for himself by pretty much saying word for word exactly what he said at York. When he said “I’ve never been moved by a wall of cunt before” I fought the urge to yell at him that he had. C’mon, it’s a new tour and if Russell’s got new material then surely it’s not too much of a chore for you to as well.

Luckily he’s only on for half an hour so I just zoned out and let him continue with jokes I could have blurted out the punchlines to. Then came the first perk - merchandise. He’s gone from having two t-shirts, hotpants and a mug to three t-shirts, hats, scarves, bags and a mug. If you can judge the size of a comedian by his merchandise then it’s safe to say that he’s doing pretty well for himself. Personally I just bought one t-shirt in a women’s small, which is still to big on me.

Anyway, on to the main event.

The first thing you notice about Russell as he bounds on stage is his lack of microphone. Well, a lack of a microphone in the traditional sense, you see he’s gone the way of Ross Noble and invested in a radio headset microphone. This is totally fine as, like Ross, he’s a comedian who talks with their body. To put it another way, they enhance their routine by miming along with most of what they’re saying as they go along including, in Russell’s case, throwing eyebrows into a sink (watch out for that one, it’s not totally obvious…).

I think it’s safe to say that Russell is a dingledodie - someone who acts stupidly and doesn’t really care too much (thank you Jack Kerouac) - and this is basically what the show’s about; those moments of madness provided by these dingledodies.

One of the things I’m grateful for is the fact that it was an entirely new set. Sure, I had had a bit of crossover from seeing him at Latitude but even what I had heard at Latitude he’d embellished with some choice witty asides, thus making the jokes even funnier. I’m just glad I haven’t been paying too much attention to Mock the Week this series otherwise I expect I’d have already heard quite a bit more than that.

I’ll be honest though, I’m unsure of how much of what Russell says is true. I mean does he really lie under his brother’s bed at his age of 28 just to freak him out once he’s turned the lights out? The thing is though, it doesn’t matter. Even if it is all fiction he performs it with such a childish enthusiasm that you can’t help but get wrapped up in his juvenile world, so much so that you just don’t want to leave.

I’m kinda disappointed that I returned my ticket for his next show but at the same time, do I really want to have to sit through Steve Hall again?