Paul Foot

Komedia, Brighton, Thursday, October 18

Ahead of this show, I did an interview with Paul Foot which I firmly believe is the most bizarre interview I have ever done.

Then I found myself in Komedia, watching Paul’s new show, Image Conscious, and can safely say that the strangeness that I felt in the interview was very much translated to the stage.

Paul Foot bounds around the stage like a man possessed, shouting more often than not and proving that he is just utterly bonkers.

I suppose the first indication that this would be a crazy show was when Paul came over the PA system to introduce his support act, in a monologue that lasted about five minutes and was far more convoluted than necessary.

Speaking of the support, Malcolm Head is also far from your conventional comedian.

With a set peppered with poetry, little of which rhymed, and haikus, football chants and bongos, it is an enjoyable 20 minutes of comedy and gets a good reaction from the crowd.

However I believe there is nothing in the world that can prepare you for seeing Paul Foot.

The premise of his show revolves around asking one audience member to imagine he is a 53-year-old woman who is desperately wanting to plan an orgy.

He is a little taken aback when he finds out the man he has chosen, and who he has spoken to in depth about a lot of very mature content, is just 16-years-old and has come with his mother.

That doesn’t stop adult scenarios from streaming forward, as Foot goes off on a number of tangents, including comparing fathers to soft shell crab, arguing with a heckler about peach ice cream, and a rousing rendition of the 1982 World Snooker Championship final.

There are moments that are a bit strange, and very out there to say the least, but this ends up being 75 minutes or so of the most British of all comedy.

I found it very hard to rate this show because although I found myself in fits of hysterics on a number of occasions it was very hard to distinguish just why I was laughing.

Whether it was the content of the show, or just the utter madness as Foot delivers his lines, it was very hard not to laugh, either at or with the veteran comic.

In the end I decided that the amount I was laughing constituted a good show, no matter what the context of the laughter.

Jamie Walker