An evening enjoying the warm presence and clever wit of Andy Hamilton is a welcome treat. For well over forty years now this genial gent has been adding special sparkle to radio, stage and TV as panellist, sit-com writer, stand-up comedian, Mr Elephant and Satan. Along with various other etceteras, he co-wrote the massively successful TV sit-coms Outnumbered and Drop the Dead Donkey and is always a favourite on TV’s Have I Got News For You and QI and on Radio 4’s The News’ Quiz and I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue. His radio sit-com hit, Old Harry’s Game, has frequently filled the comedy spot, and yes, he’s also written books. One of these (plugged in passing) is – quite literally – Longhand, a humorous entertainment, written and printed in Mr H’s own beautiful handwriting. Blue Is The Colour (plugged in passing and out in September) is the memoir of a disillusioned Chelsea football fan, while plugged in passing and eliciting an audible thrill of delight is the Drop the Dead Donkey stage show, soon to play and starring the original cast who have now moved on in time – and body.
Andy’s tried and tested format works splendidly – to wit: one session of good-humoured comic anecdote, reminiscence and comment followed by one session of spontaneous answers to questions written by the audience during the interval and shoved in a bucket. Contrary to a statement appearing on Wikipedia for some months, Mr Hamilton still has his full complement of legs so he takes his hand-mic for leisurely strolls about the stage as, chatty, smiling and relaxed, he regales the audience with his musings. Some of what crops up this time: the relative thickness of politicians past and present, Edwina Curry, Ipswich, Cornwall, Ethics, Boris Johnson, failing memory, Prince Andrew, cricketers, colleagues, motley fans, the surreal William Shatner HIGNFY episode, insults, hands-up surveys and oath-taking for the audience, strange but true anecdotes involving strangers who mistake Mr Hamilton for a serial killer (deceased!), and the definition of “dichotomy” as the surgical removal of a Welshman. Unlike at some current Macbeth productions, there are no trigger warnings regarding traumatic content, so audiences attend at their own risk.
Satire and wit often have serious issues at their foundation, and with thought-provoking humour, via five particular jokes, Andy deals with an issue that’s a growing dilemma for comedians today: now we live in a society where, increasingly, almost anything may cause offence or trauma to someone or other, what is it acceptable or unacceptable to mention in creating laughter? All five jokes quoted made people laugh, and discussing why the jokes made them laugh made them laugh, too. Yet, putting the humour aside and calling in PC Wokeness to analyse the words and events more literally, we see the jokes involve abuse and arrestable offence, the knocking of religion and ethnic peoples, bad language, bad taste, cruelty, violence and what would, in reality, be traumatic, nightmare goings-on. So why do people laugh? Maybe because they’re moral rather than immoral or amoral? Might laughing at nightmare scenarios be therapeutic in helping our psyches deal with disturbing issues and events? Might we process reality and invented situations completely differently? Well, Andy’s got it all sussed, thank goodness, and the laughter keeps flowing.
Eventually, having committed high treason and incriminated the entire audience as accomplices, Mr Hamilton rounded off the evening with a short, comic song. Devilish!
Eileen Caiger Gray
The show goes on to venues in Newbury, Launceston, Plymouth, Lichfield and Milton Keynes.
