Hal Cruttenden: Tough Luvvie, On tour
There’s a particular, peculiar tradition of British comedy that Hal Cruttenden neatly fits into: the camp comic who’s also a snob. From Kenneth Williams to Tom Allen, there has always been a market for effeminate stylings allied to a waspish, holier-than-thou gentility. Cruttenden is a softer soul than Williams, and a heterosexual father-of-two, but he’s afflicted with delicately prissy tones and an impeccably middle-class background, and he mines both to great effect in his accessible, gag-heavy stand-up. Increasingly in demand on panel shows, he’s a host on the forthcoming run of Live At The Apollo. Tough Luvvie represents him at his best, a crowdpleaser in the most positive sense of the word, as he tackles shibboleths of modern masculinity and mines his family life for comedy gold.
Richard Herring: Lord Of The Dance Settee, On tour
Stewart Lee’s former double-act partner Richard Herring has done more than most stand-ups to explore the potential of multiple media platforms as vehicles for his comedy. He maintains a daily blog, tweets incessantly, has hosted various radio shows for all sorts of employers and produces a dizzying variety of podcasts – from one-to-one interviews with other comics to a truly bizarre show where he plays himself at snooker. Taking its title from a wilful childhood misinterpretation of a hymn, his new show Lord Of The Dance Settee is a celebration of lifelong daftness, full of elaborately constructed flights of illogical fancy and moments of gleeful childishness. He’s also recording a podcast with Al Murray at the Leicester Square Theatre and supporting Rob Delaney at Bush Hall.
Rob Delaney, London
Twitter has now been around for long enough that we can talk legitimately about an evolution in the way comedians use it. Before, most of the attention centred on existing big names using Twitter as a means of titillating their fanbase. Now, there’s much more of a focus on using the medium as a means of identifying hot new talent. Writers are being hired on new US shows on the basis of their consistently hilarious Twitter accounts (such as Alison Agosti and Bryan Donaldson for Seth Meyers) and where producers Stateside lead, ours are guaranteed to follow. Rob Delaney is a classic example of this kind of engineering. Rather than achieving fame off the back of hundreds of shitty club gigs, he made his name thanks to a stream of wildly popular tweets, and has parlayed that into a successful live career. You might expect he’d specialise in pithy one-liners, but in fact Delaney spins longer yarns onstage, all powered by a spirit of relentless cynicism.
Bush Hall, W12, Fri
