In the absence of Daniel Kitson the coolest comedian at this year’s festival is Tim Key. Though as he joked throughout his show, he is a comedian who hasn’t quite been invited onto the comedy stage yet, having shuttled between the literature and theatre tents in the past. This year he was in the poetry tent, which felt right. Not to big, not too hot, and, of course, he had plenty of joyous so-bad-they-are-brilliant poems printed on the back of saucy laminated playing cards to read out.

This was a nicely loose gig in which, at one point, Key seemed to morph into the Pub Landlord. As a beam of evening sun streamed in and illuminated a Volvic bottle full of piss-coloured liquid being held aloft in the audience he asked the holder to share it with a bloke in the front and then, having spilt his own trademark can of lager early in the set, decided to help himself to the strange concoction, which turned out to be ginger beer and mostly rum.

It was a lovely, boozy interlude which ended with Key giving his new drinking buddy his number so that they could continue imbibing back at his tent. Although if it really was his number Key would have been getting a lot of calls inviting him for drinks last night as he shouted it out to everyone from the stage. Maybe that was the plan.  

The rest of the show was pretty good too, with Key louchely rattling out his verses between offbeat probably-not-true stories about tim Henman and footballer David Platt and. There was some good new stuff here, but my favourite remains his zen-like classic.“Tania googled herself. Still nothing.”

More reviews here.

Picture by Bruce Dessau.