The Alpine Club

The Alpine Club

30 March, 2009
by: Katuschka

The Alpine Club is held in cosy little gastro pub, The Magdala, with an intimate space upstairs that lends itself well to comedy. Unfortunatly, perhaps because we are in one of the more affluent areas of London, the crowd are fairly sober and reticent; making difficult work for compere Ross Ashcroft. Ashcroft gets the evening off to a shaky start, engaging the audience in some Q +A only to be met with awkward silences and, when asking: "And what brings you here madam?" gets the answer "Well I was hoping for some comedy" - ouch. Touching on events such as the boy who painted a huge cock on his parent's mansion to digs at Gordon Brown, he eventually manages to tease some extremely eloquent heckling out of the Belsize Park audience who yell recommendations for books on politics.

The stand-up proves to be a fairly solid mix; Andrew Watts performs a routine full of masturbatory adventures, Gary Colman (sadly not of Diffr'ent Strokes fame – yes that was one of his jokes) tells an amusing anecdote about his new puppy's sexual proclivities and a truly bombastic Brian Blessed impersonator (who stepped in at the last minute to cover for the absent Lady Garden) commands the room; booming, spluttering and reading from Brian's 'diary' ("November 25th,2002: I eat poison just to see if I will die. November 26th 2002 – I did not die").

Headliner John Gordillo paces the room carrying around a script and telling the crowd that this was his new material and he would cross out any bits which didn't work. This of course sets him up for laughs later on when he crosses out anything which makes the audience groan with a pained expression. A large chunk of his material focuses on his teenage stepdaughter who he refers to as the Devil Incarnate, despite earlier attempts to engage her with his mid forties 'hipness'. Particularly amusing are her complaints that he was lurking outside her room 'all the time', to which a frustrated Gordillo replies: "I wasn't lurking, I was slowing down and stopping."

Although the comedy was thinly spread at points, and the audience were reluctant to participate, the Alpine Club is a great place if you're looking for a relaxed evening out and definitely worth taking a chance on for moments of genius like a last minute Brian Blessed.

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Katuschka