Lee Evans's eight-month national tour ended at Wembley Arena with the country's biggest-ever solo comedy gigs. This level of success could not have happened to a more deserving chap. In the supercool world of British stand-up, Evans makes an unusually generous effort to amuse his crowd. It works. He is an entertainer of the old school - which he confirmed on Friday night by concluding his two-hour set with an overblown showbiz singalong accompanied by the City of London Choir.
The secret of his success isn't only his material, for much of it is pedestrian. It is all about the presentation. What, after all, could be funnier that a meek man enraged? Fuming impotently against life's everyday irritants, Evans is the mouse that roared. Caravanning couples taking tea by the M25? "What the fuck are they doing?" Evans explodes. His wife saying that the house keys are always in the last place you look? "Well, I'm not going to keep looking after I've found them, am I?" seethes her spouse, his lid fit to flip.
Evans is a joy to watch. His elastic, expressive body supplies most of his punchlines. Now he is impersonating cigarette smoke, now seagulls intimidating tourists at the seaside. Now he is proposing "freestyle running" as an Olympic sport, or powering his television with static electricity.
The one unsatisfying aspect of the show is that Evans's eagerness to please sometimes sees him use comic cliches. He will use phrases such as, "All blokes do the same thing." Actually, they don't - as Evans himself later demonstrates. One minute he is saying that men cannot express their feelings. The next he is introducing his dad on-stage to tell him, in front of 10,000 people, how much he loves him. This is but one component of an eye-popping, emotional conclusion that sees Evans serenading the crowd under a cascade of falling glitter. It is kitsch, but it is also a heart-warming send-off from a performer whose generosity of spirit is instrumental to his now spectacular success.
