Arts > Comedy

Paul Foot

30/10/14

Picture a man with a ‘70s glam rocker haircut, clothes that barely fit and silver shoes. If you’re thinking that sounds absurd, you’d be right. If you are thinking “That kind of sounds like Paul Foot”, you’d be right again. Indeed, the one thing that I can say with certainty after having seen his latest show – Hovercraft Symphony in Gammon # Major - is that Paul Foot delights in the absurd.

From the start, an offstage argument with a nameless (and probably non-existent) stage hand about a broken microphone creates an awkward yet expectant tension in the crowd. Is this a thing? Am I part of a happening, or has someone actually fucked up here? It’s all part of the show of course, but this sums up Foot’s structure perfectly – there isn’t any. Or at least that’s what Foot would have you believe. He then reads out a list of material that his “management” have forced him to scrap from the show (I know it’s supposed to be absurd, but thinking we would believe that ANYONE has creative control over Foot...?) including my personal favourite, Dionne Warwick’s dangerously loose leg, which also gives Foot the opportunity to get into some pretty damn funny physical humour, at which there can be no doubt that he excels. Then it’s time to start the show properly, and do the offstage announcement again – only this time from the lap of a front row audience member that he has ‘spontaneously’ leapt onto. Foot proceeds to then revel in the awkwardness of talking about himself into a microphone literally 2 inches in front of a random person’s face. And that’s a metaphor.

 Actually, random is the perfect word to describe the rest of Foot’s set although, unfortunately, that’s not wholly complimentary. Despite its common misuse, the dictionary still defines ‘random’ as “without definite aim, purpose or method; in a haphazard way, “ and I have to say that I got lost in some of the more elaborate bouts of whimsy that followed. Sure, the hardcore Foot followers in the audience were enjoying this extreme tomfoolery, but more than the rest of us and by the time he leapt onto an audience member’s lap for the fourth time, I was just glad it wasn’t me. And before anyone says that I just don’t get ‘that’ style of comedy, (a) fuck you, and (b) I’ve seen Foot previously being just as surreal, but funnier, so I refer you back to (a).

 So, if you think that a funny looking, funny-man, stamping his funny foot on the stage before launching himself into your peers is enough to make you laugh – actually, now that I’ve written it down, that does seem rather funny – then this is the show for you.