I’ve always really liked Jon Richardson. Despite being represented by Off The Kerb, whose biggest acts are mainstream shiny-floor, shiny-suited comics, there has always been something different about him. It wasn’t just his curmudgeonly misanthropy – Jack Dee from the same agency has been doing that for years – there seemed to be something deeper niggling him. Or maybe I just related to his low-level OCD and his obsession with putting the knives in the correct cutlery compartment.
Anyway, Richardson’s Nidiot tour is a big one and not just in the sense that he is playing his largest venues yet. It is also his biggest challenge yet because his USP has always been his grumpiness and now he is happy. As anyone who watched the first edition of Jon Richardson Grows Up will know, he is loved up and engaged (to fellow comic Lucy Beaumont). So Nidiot has to negotiate a tricky path, acknowledging this happiness but still giving the fans what they want – weapons-grade whining.
And, impressively, he manages to achieve both. The show cleverly weaves stories about Richardson's refusal or inability to fit in to expected male stereotypes with tales of his emerging relationship with his future wife. Some of this covers off-the-peg subject matter – checking into hotels, stag weekends, getting annoyed about your partner squeezing the toothpaste from the middle, wanting a double seat on a train – but Richardson tackles everything brilliantly. He repeatedly jokes that he has a voice that sounds like a vacuum cleaner. He is certainly able to hoover up every laugh in the room.
The best moments are the set-piece extended stories. In the first half he talks at length about being involved in the TV documentary Real Man’s Road Trip, which he made with Sean Lock. The highlight – in every sense – was a speedboat trip which Richardson had understandable misgivings about when they were given the keys to the boat and a crate of lager. And yet despite his reservations things turn out reasonably well.
In the second half there is more focus on his new romance and the travails of cohabiting with a man who likes to alphabetize everything. There’s a riff about binge-drinking Britain which has a whiff of Seann Walsh about it at first, but Richardson soon finds his own spin on our quaint habit of having six lagers too many and then finishing the night off with a pint of Jagermeister. He plays the man out of time very well, yearning for the innocent, coy days of Blind Date rather than the horrorshow cattle truck snogathon of Take Me Out ("there is no isle of Fernando's. I've checked").
Towards the end we certainly see Richardson softening up. The relationship seems to be working out despite his eccentric behaviour. He says at one point that he is worried about committing because in his experience all relationships end badly. One of his greatest fears is ending up like one of those couples who sit in a restaurant together with nothing to say. I can’t see that happening with Richardson. He showed onstage that he always has plenty to say. If nothing else he’ll be able to talk to his other half about where to put the cutlery.
Jon Richardson is on tour. Details here.
