For ten years, Mirth Control Comedy has been a major player in bringing live comedy to over 90 venues across the UK. If a club, pub, hotel (or you name it) has a space and a night available then Mirth Control – founded by comedian Geoff Whiting – provide the local promoters with acts. So increasing numbers of comics, guided by the light of the Sat Nav, traverse the nation's motorways leaving laughter and discarded Gingsters Pie wrappers in their wake.
Usually a Mirth Control night follows a tried and trusted comedy show format. An MC/host, then a strong opening act that will do about 20/25 minutes, a middle spot filled by an up and coming talent to do about 10/15minutes and a quality headline act doing 30/40 minutes. That's around two hours of entertainment with two breaks in between to empty and refill bladders.
Each separate club has its own idiosyncratic identity and this is certainly the case with the Comedy Night at The George. Directly opposite the imposing the Royal Courts of Justice, The George has been calling our learned friends to the bar with cheap drink (by West End standards) since 1723. As I entered the long but narrow timber ceiling, floored and panelled bar – this place has more wood than a Fluffer's Convention – I'm confronted by a group of 20 legal types in full black tie braying about rugby while a mouse scuttled beneath them un-noticed.
In the upstairs bar, Promoter/MC, Tim Fouricci has amended the Mirth Control formula with extra comics and brings a slightly decadent air to proceedings. In his leopard skin jacket, he's a genial, free-wheeling host with amusing anecdotes. Yet tonight's audience, dominated by young professionals, were reserved throughout a first half of observational comedy from Ian Hunter and Boyce Bailey – both had some great gags but struggled for momentum. Only Nick Pettigrew, with a salacious set, consistently roused the room.
After the break Lateef Lovejoy and Jason Patterson were two energetic black comics who despite bantering with the audience, still found some sharp observations on life getting muted responses.
Hexacordal and Otiz Cannelloni were the two standout performers because they offered something different. Hexacordal, in only his second gig, is 17, wafer thin with bum-fluffed cheeks yet to be slapped by post-pubescence. Armed with a ukulele (currently making a comeback as the comic's instrument of choice), he sings blackly humorous ditties – like a Pete Docherty with a fixation on dead pussies. Cannelloni is a circuit legend, who used a combination of skilfully crafted 'punny' one-liners, cod magic tricks and stage experience to finally induce hilarity into a previously reticent room.
In a world where the ruling comedy gods are observational heroes like Bill Hicks and Chris Rock, a kid with a ukulele and a man with a pack of cards can still make 'em laugh. George Formby and Tommy Cooper respect due.
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