Stand Up Hero and The World Stand-Up’s performer Andrew Watts is angry. He’s angry because he was due to go on Sky 1s trap-door comedy talent show Don’t Stop Me Now where stand-ups must make audiences laugh or be sent to fall into obscurity. He was rejected days before as his weight apparently made the trap door mechanism unsafe. On the evidence of this set they needn’t have been worried: there was no chance he wasn’t going to have the crowd laughing.
Watts quick wit was shown throughout in his sharp responses to audience reaction, such as mock berating those who let out noises of sympathy and in a number of original misdirection puns. His background as a lawyer evidenced itself in his unusual and almost inadvertent use of citation to back up his points. He discussed a wide array of topics such as his distaste for character comedy, his experiences with his girlfriend and having a nervous breakdown onstage, promising throughout that all of it was true and that he would always be honest.
His audience settled upon this promise of honesty most of all and in fact seemed rather taken by it. They let risky references to the trials and tribulations of dating a feminist, his approval of the coalition government and (most daringly given the audience and location) the inadequacies of Robert Burns slide by with self-deprecating chuckles that matched his endearing manner.
The profundity of some of his lines wrong-footed his audience. The remark that there’s ‘Nothing funny about being happy’ was an elegant observation that drew a smattering of applause alongside the laughter. Several clever scientific puns and slow uptake jokes drew a similar response.
However, while the man is very intelligent this shouldn’t be seen as a euphemism that implies some sort of comedic shortcoming; nodding heads and belly laughs could be witnessed within seconds of each other, proving that Watts has plenty of strings to his bow.
