Jason Byrne

Review: Jason Byrne – You Can Come In But Don’t Start Anything

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Jason Byrne is the kind of comedian you can’t ignore. And that’s not solely because he’s stood up on the stage at Cardiff’s TramShed with a microphone. From the second Byrne bounds on to stage, he has his devoted audience like a ball of putty in his hand. There’s Nana who came last year who has baked him a box of Welsh cakes, and her entire family who the comic remembers immediately.

Quite fittingly then, Byrne’s new show, You Can Come In But Don’t Start Anything, is about family, childhood, and the values you acquire as a result of the way in which you are raised. Growing up as an 80s kid himself, Jason has his fair few ridiculous anecdotes to share, and he uses these as a comparison to his view of the way children are raised in 2018. He talks of being slapped by his mum, and jokes about being unassisted whilst choking on the toys hidden in boxes of cereal (both of which didn’t seem too far from my own childhood, despite having been born in the late 90s). The comparisons are quite distorted to fit the view that today’s children are being mollycoddled, but he gets away with it as he is such a charming and energetic performer. His faux-exasperation leads to hysteria, which leads to the biggest laughs.

Jason Byrne: You Can Come In But Don’t Start Anything

But this comic is not trying to take the moral high ground here. In fact, in many of the anecdotes he shares he’s keen to paint himself as a ‘stupid man’ who’s occasionally moronic actions (such as taking nine magnesium tablets in one sitting) get no respect from his no-nonsense wife. Byrne is down to earth and not afraid to make a fool of himself, in fact, he seems to really enjoy it. And this drives home the clear fact that his amiability is his strongest quality.

He’s comfortable honing in on specific people in the room, having very natural discussions with audience members and remembering specific details about them to call back on later in the show. As ever with Jason Byrne, as he brings his whole audience together by chatting to different corners of the room, it becomes evident that each live show is a one-off, unique spectacle.

Jason Byrne is so likeable because he encourages his audience, however old or young, to be naughty and mischievous just like him. It’s clear that he could play even bigger rooms than this one, with this confident charm and apparent ease in front of an audience. Jason is currently his show, You Can Come In But Don’t Start Anything, across the UK and Ireland, and you can see the full list of dates here.

Review: Jason Byrne – You Name The Show

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Jason Byrne arrived in Bromsgrove at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon, ready to perform to a relatively small crowd, more of a ‘group’ in Jason’s words.

JasonOn stage stood a giant, colourful wheel that was full of interesting headings that seemed unsystematic but gave us a tiny smidgen of insight as to what was to come. Alongside it stood a whiteboard full of winning titles from each night of the show, from Aberdeen to Colchester and everywhere in between. Each title made no sense to today’s audience as it’s clear each show developed its own ‘in-jokes’ as they progressed. With this in mind, I had no idea how very cliquey our experience was to be, and how strange the people I was surrounded by actually were!

Jason moved around the space with ease. He spoke confidently and we could see that he obviously hugely enjoys what he does. We were assured that he’d never performed stand up at 3pm before, and we were well aware that we were making history (though weren’t sure as to what extent yet).

The show was kicked into gear relatively early on, with an orchestrated act of theft from a man on the front row who, under Jason’s command, stole an air freshener from the toilets. This was entertaining and a source of laughter, but was certainly how the comedian expected things to go. That was until a person went out to the foyer later on and returned with a bin, and then another who came back with a chair, and finally, a man who returned with a massive 6ft stand from reception full of leaflets and flyers which flew everywhere as a small group attempted to get it up on the stage. The scene was an absurd, leaflet-y carnage.

Jason

Jason, Chris, and a room of lunatics

There was a clear definition between material and crowd-work but it ended up that the majority of the show was unique to us, which was by no means a bad thing. Most of the biggest laughs came out of moments of madness from within the audience: such as the person known only as ‘Someone Else’ and the man who spends his days looking at monkeys. This new style of show allows each performance to be entirely incomparable and mean something different to each audience that watches it, whilst also demonstrating Byrne’s brilliant improvisation skills.

Byrne ended by individually thanking each person he had spoken to during the show; people seated here, there and everywhere. As result, and as opposed to my experience in October with the audience for James Acaster (though through no fault of his own), everyone was brought together in beautiful unison. This skilled comedian had managed to make a room full of strangers feel like a gathering of old friends; the atmosphere was electric and many laughs were had.

And that was ‘Three Chris’s, Half a Finger and a Monkey Fucker’. Thank you Jason, and thank you Bromsgrove.

TV Review: Alan Davies As Yet Untitled

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A couple of weeks ago, the channel Dave broadcast five episodes of a wonderful new comedy chat show: As Yet Untitled. It was hosted by Alan Davies, ran over the course of one working week and featured four different comedians each episode. It has been said that this show was an attempt at recreating the feel of a comedy green room, with a relaxed atmosphere and a minimal agenda. Of course, I cannot truly know if it drew an accurate comparison as I haven’t been in such a situation myself, but I can say that a comfortable conversational feel was definitely present and I found the series incredibly enjoyable.

For a start, the physical set up was uniquely casual, with the four guests and Alan Davies (the host) sat around a circular table and the audience sat around them. The way the audience was situated had almost a Top Gear feel as you could always see them in shot, but they weren’t often involved in the proceedings. Each comic provided a strange fact about themselves to begin with which allowed the discussion to have some kind of initial direction but other than that, the show had a clean slate with the objective of deciding on a title for the episode at the end.

There was a danger with this loose format that conversation might not necessarily be free-flowing but this was expertly avoided by Davies who did an excellent job at steering clear of awkward pauses in discussion. In fact, the overall feel of the programme was very natural and chilled out which I thought was really nice. There was no pushing to have anyone’s voice heard over another person’s and everyone seemed very supportive of each other which is refreshing in comparison to the vibes you get from shows with more competitive, maybe harsher formats. An important impression I got from watching As Yet Untitled was that the attention was very much focussed on the stories and the people in the stories, and not so much on the comedians telling them. This meant that nobody appeared to be pushing particularly hard to be the funny one and in this way, I think the show definitely achieved its objective of seeming like a green room.

There were many funny anecdotes shared throughout the five episodes, including Bob Mortimer’s explanation of his and Vic Reeves’ comedy style, where in the early days, if the audience weren’t laughing, the double act would throw their shoes at them. We also heard the wonderful Katherine Ryan’s tale of the creepy inflatophiliac and Noel Fielding’s reason for disappearing from his own stand up tour (he ended up spending the day working in a vintage second-hand shop in Brighton, I mean, where else?). Bill Bailey’s account of his New Zealand airport kazoo confiscation was whimsical, as can be expected from Bailey and Phill Jupitus’ numerous celebrity impressions were spot on. Ross Noble’s tales about his accident-prone kids and Josie Long’s flawless diet plan were highlights of the final episode.

It was easy for the television audience to get carried away amongst all these hilarious anecdotes, which proves what an authentic mood there was, and every now and then I would remember how different the show actually is and feel really impressed at the smoothness of it all. At any point where a normal chat show may have become awkward, such as when they transition between topics or invite a special guest on, the conversation just continued on in the same fashion which shows integrity. The only flaw I could find, or perhaps the only stunted part of each episode, was trying to round it all off at the end. Of course, these would have been heavily edited to fit the time frame but the scramble to find a title could be done with more finesse in the future.

I adored this new show and the many guests on it; my favourites including Noel Fielding, Bob Mortimer, Katherine Ryan, Josie Long, Jason Byrne, Ross Noble, Bill Bailey and Marcus Brigstocke. I will be pretty annoyed if there aren’t more episodes made soon!