Greenwich Comedy Festival, London, has all the trappings expected of a festival and features 45 comedians across five days in the gardens of the National Maritime Museum. Household names like Harry Hill, Dara Ó Briain, Josh Widdicombe, Nina Conti, Alan Davies and newer faces will each take to the outdoor stage in the ‘Big Top’.
Amstell’s undeniable charm and willing self-deprecation have us onside and clamouring for more
The show is headlined by Simon Amstell and hosted by Amy Gledhill, who received this year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award for ‘Best Show’. The Hull native is the perfect host for this very blue show. Only one bit - her mum lamenting her move to London where “they walk so fast” - isn’t about her dating and/or sex life, but is in keeping with the rest of the show.
Opening act Sindhu Vee is the one anomaly, in the best way possible, as her material focuses on the woes of parenting. Vee is at her confident and caustic best as she recommends the only way to parent elder children is to gaslight them.
There’s an interval, followed by two more acts: UK-based Texan Kemah Bob fresh from a sold-out Edinburgh Festival Fringe run and Friday Night Dinner star Tom Rosenthal. Bob regales with how some alone time has led to her needing “a new floor” and Rosenthal laments being robbed of his foreskin without his consent. So far, so outré.
And yet, the perfect lead-up to our headliner, who - in an act of showing us how much the “healing” he has been doing has helped him shed a lot of shame - proudly declares “I love rimming!” A lot of Amstell’s anecdotes-cum-bits begin with, “I was at a party recently...” which makes it sound like he’s not getting up to much else. Well, other than the hallucinogenic drugs he’s become partial to and which also form the setup to various bits.
Some setup variety wouldn’t have been amiss, but Amstell’s undeniable charm and willing self-deprecation have us onside and clamouring for more.
