There is stand-up comedy, there is theatre and then there is this different kind of phenomenon that seems to have emerged in recent years where people not connected to either genre pitch up onstage and entertain audiences for an evening. Caitlin Moran and Danny Baker both have tours in the pipeline and this week Suggs finished his latest tour, What A King Cnut, at the London Palladium.
Whereas Danny Baker wings it in his show, Suggs’ autobiographical evening feels like a pretty tightly scripted affair. It is very funny but not really stand-up. Instead it is the Madness frontman shooting the breeeze for two hours by trotting out a number of neatly linked anecdotes about his life and times, with a few welcome stripped down versions of nutty hits accompanied by pianist Deano Mumford lobbed into the mix.
And Suggs - aka Camden Town's finest son and regular party animal Graham McPherson – certainly has no shortages of breezes to shoot. From being a bit of a teenage tearaway and crashing a Sweeney-style Ford Granada on Hampstead Heath to tracking down a long lost relative, he has lived a particularly eventful life. Actually it’s even more eventful than the show suggests - there is an earlier show/radio broadcast about a whole different raft of McPherson tales.
If there is a theme here it is the drinking that casts its shadow over a number of escapades, whether trying to gate-crash a night at the Groucho Club via a back window to ending up onstage trying to liven up a Primal Scream gig at Glastonbury with an impromptu cameo. Alcohol doesn't seem to be a problem for him though, although he does have the rather endearing habit of being thrown out of things - a motif is the line “Later, outside on the pavement…”
There is certainly plenty of nostalgia here for music fans of a certain age as the life-long Chelsea fan recalls Madness gigs during the Two Tone era that could end up in fights as well as encores. He perfectly captures the edginess of being a gig-goer in the late seventies and early eighties when punch-ups were regular occurences but the gigs were still unforgettable.
Elsewhere Brian May repeatedly pops up as a running gag as Suggs recalls bumping into the tousle-haired badger-loving Queen star at various showbiz shindigs, including one at Buckingham Palace. The boy from Camden Town has come a long way. Inevitably Suggs recalls how he had the last laugh, but then he would - this is his show after all. Brian May will have to do his own anecdote show if he wants to have his revenge.
