Booze dominates stand-up like no other form of entertainment. Whether on late-night TV or the club circuit, nine out of 10 routines will be performed to drunks or those who at least have a bit of a buzz on. And this brings out the best and worst in comics. A few, like Al Murray, have intelligent fun with British drinking habits; most just crank up the knob and fanny gags for the stag and hen parties. Phil Kay, for some reason known only to himself, seems to have decided to play the pub bore.
The show begins promisingly. Kay, a Scottish Catweazle with straggly brown hair and a scrubby beard, has almost sold out the Soho Theatre's 80-seat studio, even pulling in a sprinkling of comedy-world celebs. He is a warm, friendly performer - not a supercilious microphone-waltzer like Jack Dee, but a touchy-feely chatterbox on the lines of Ross Noble or Chris Addison. Rather than assemble prefabricated and finely polished gags and anecdotes, he builds his act from conversations with the audience, swapping stories about friends and families.
For the first 45 minutes of this two-hour show, as he chugs his pint and tells us about his wife and two kids, slipping in tales about bicycle theft and his local hardware store, you feel as if you have popped out for a drink and struck up a conversation with the world's most fascinating man.
Things go downhill in the interval, when rather than leave the audience to chat among themselves Kay opts to play some of his deliberately amateurish songs, accompanying himself on guitar. This is a sweet thought - value for money or what? - and he explains that we are free to wander out to the bar. His stream of consciousness contains some fascinating insights, but after six or seven numbers you feel you are being buttonholed.
By the second half, Kay is red and sweaty, and has knocked over his half-bottle of whisky. He never quite gets control of the evening again, even when he is briefly hanging upside down from some lighting brackets. By now we are thoroughly sick of his kids, but have to hear more about them as he tries to get a conversation going with a pregnant woman in the audience, then bangs on about childbirth. "I'm a wee bit tired," he says, but throws away the chance to give himself a rest. The guitar comes out again; he admits he's going on too long. And then he carries on. And on.
