Dave Gorman - Grasp the Pineapple

Bill Bailey - Limboland

Paul Merton's Impro Chums

Dara O'Briain - Crowd Tickler

Tangentleman

Ross Noble gave a great performance at WAC. Plenty of improv with a reasonable helping of prepared material including a story about how a SWAT team surrounded his Zombie Wagon in the belief it contained an armoury (which later turned out to be some Wellie Boots)

Bill Bailey

We went to see Bill on his second night at Warwick Call Arts Centre, during his current tour: Qualmpeddler. Highlights for me included the musical sections such as Horntallica and a Dub Reggae version of Downton Abbey. The show was interspersed with plenty of his usual 'whimsy' and the apparent discovery of a new catchphrase but I expect he'll come back to that later. I'd like to see more coherence between his sketches as it sometimes felt like a tombola of anecdotes but he still manages to deliver great buckets of humour in all the right places.

Alan Davies

Another comedic night out, this time with Alan Davies who gave a brilliant stand up performance. There was no particular theme although he did explain that his tour name came from the lips of a 6 year old child who calmly responded to her mother's chastisement with a sigh, and the first Buddhist truth that "life is pain." Other highlights included the ritual denegration of any latecomers, (particularly those from Nuneaton), and the public 'outing' of his mate Dave via the the medium of Facebook Pokes.

Rhod Gilbert

For his most recent tour Rhod recounts the life-changing effects of having a flaming battenburg tattoo inked onto his shoulder. Topics range from the non-availability of egg & cress sandwiches ('Sorry sir, that one is for display purposes only, so that customers know we sell egg & cress sandwiches') to the futility of anger management diaries ('Given the recent incident that has made you angry; on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is not at all, how angry are you right now?')
Rhod claims that he is calmer and less angry nowadays yet he still manages to deliver his punchlines with as much scathing wit as ever.

Jack Dee

In an act of pure sponteneity, we decided to see if there were any returned tickets for Jack Dee's Stand-Up performance in Warwick Arts Centre. Surprisingly there were, so we scoffed our supper and headed across town for an evening of mirth. Jack's performance was pretty solid although some of the material felt laboured and lacking creativity. Highlights included his "where's the tent?" story which struck a chord and could easily have drawn parallels with my own tent story had it not recently been rediscovered!