It's Grin Up North

Someone asked me the other day if I had a bed at the City Hall - not surprising given the amount of times we've been recently. It's the Grin Up North comedy festival at the moment,  and as I love a good laugh, we always try to get tickets to some of the events. First  was Dara O'Briain a couple of weeks ago, which I've already posted about, but in the last 4 days we've been to see three very different but very funny acts.

Sunday was Sarah Millican - seen her a lot in programmes such as Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week etc, and always wanted to see her live. She was as just as good as I expected her to be - and a lot ruder than on TV.

 

Then on Monday we went to see Ross Noble - one of my favourite comedians, and have seen him a couple of times live already. We were sitting very near the front, which is a bit unnerving given his tendency to engage with the audience - in fact most of his act looks as though its randomly generated by his interactions with the audience, but I'm sure there's a structure he follows. The stage was covered by a giant curtain when we arrived

which after a countdown, fell to reveal a stage of inflatables. Ross was as surreal and funny as ever, and at the interval, the audience left him an assortment of gifts, which he managed to work into his act. The best was a cucumber which someone had run to the Spar across the road and bought  (lots of references to cucumbers and beauty therapists in first half, but you had to be there....).

 Didn't get any good photos of him, camera had an off night (nothing to do with the person operating it), but I did get this of him demonstrating how you might operate a googlephone. A googlephone of course being some sort of Germanic instrument, which you had to play by making various waving movements with your arms, and stamping your foot, and....well, you had to be there.

Then last night we saw Mark Watson. Last time I saw him was at the Green Gown awards, but he didn't remember me.... :-) Another good night, very different to the others. When we got in he was sitting on the stage typing on a laptop, which was projected behind him - lots of comments about the audience. For some reason (suspect a confusion between doors open and act starting times), loads of people came in late, for the first half an hour, and very few got missed by him. Led to a bit of a disjointed, but funny first half, and the second was very good.

Only one more comedy show to go, and that's Lee Mack in a couple of weeks. Oh, nearly forgot, Peter Kay at the arena as well Don't normally like seeing comedians in such big venues, but seeing as that's all he's doing now, it's the only chance we get to see him.

Dara O'Briain, sugar pills and water memory.

Sunday night went to see Dara O'Briain at the City Hall as part of the Grin Up North Comedy Festival. Seeing quite a few acts over the next few weeks - hope they're all as good as Dara was. Very fast speaker, took a bit of getting used to especially with the Irish accent, but so funny. And a lot of improvisation from talking to the audience. Last time he was in Sheffield he found it difficult to get the audience to interact (according to his book Tickling the English), but that didn't happen this time. Lots of good responses, and some random heckling. He's a great supporter of the "skeptic" movement, and I was glad to see stuff like homeopathy and chiropractic getting a good going over.

I love the non science behind homeopathy - been written about too many times for me to go over it again. Suffice to say that its medicines are merely sugar pills or sugar water. Active ingredients diluted down so much that there are no molecules of them left in the solution at all. But, so homeopaths would have us believe, water has memory, so can remember traces of the active ingredient. Well, given what most water that we drink has been in contact with, I hope that's not true!