Comedy Show: Joe Lycett
Venue: Birmingham Symphony Hall
Support Act: Karen Bayley
Date: 27th November 2018
Have you ever laughed so much that your face hurts? It’s not something that happens very often but I imagine if you were a friend of Joe Lycett, it is a hazard that might be a common occurrence.
Hailing from Hall Green in Birmingham (Now in Kings Heath), Joe Lycett is the home-town hero that observes life going on around him and reports back to his audiences, highlighting his own and other peoples silliness with obvious glee.
Lots of stand up comedians tell stories to get laughs, but Joe seems like he would be doing these sorts of gags even if he were just down the pub with his friends, making them all laugh with the daftness he and those closest to him get up to or see.
Being from the area, some of his jokes hit better than they would elsewhere. His gentle ribbing of the Black Country and its accents (Mr Trips hails from the Black Country and loves hearing Joe rip into his beloved area). He also loves to tease his audience, as the unfortunate people who came in late found out. Joe wanted to know where they had been (The Ivy, for dinner), what they had (Prawn Lingunie) and if it was any good (It was) and settled himself on the stage right in front of them, to get all of the information.
Joes bread and butter is the daftness he comes across on the internet and in particular, social media. Via facebook, he torments an EDL member under the guise of a PR guru looking to improve the EDL’s image with rebranding. He trawls local sell and swap pages, looking for silliness to be had from people selling tat they find in the attic.
The funniest laughs come from the stores he tells about his childhood friend Peter, who is helping him do up his new house in Kings Heath, Joe hasn’t abandoned us for London thankfully. Peter it seems, has a particulary creative funny-bone himself and Joe uses his friend for a lot of laughs. I wish I could go through all of his jokes and say how funny I found them, but thats not for me to do, and Joe does it far, far better than I ever could.
If you get the opportunity to see Joe, one of the UK’s best comedians, I’d strongly recommend you do. Careful of face-ache afterwards though.
The show was supported by another local comedienne, Karen Bayley who has a dirty sense of humour and plays on being a single lady who is a bit of a cougar. A great warm up for Joe and I’d be tempted to go and see Karen do a full show of her own.
We didn’t get any photos of the show… We were front row and I may have been terrified I would be picked on.
But here we are during the interval, all excited about the show (just look at my husbands smiley happy face). And all of those seats behind us, they were pretty much full, all for Joe.
