Who: Danny McLoughlin
Where: The Comedy Store, Manchester
Why:
What even is Chester? It’s vaguely between Manchester, Liverpool. Wrexham and Crewe. It’s so dull that Michael Owen is its most interesting son. It’s so irrelevant that the Chester-born one from Steps doesn’t even get a working mic. Its best known suburb – Hollyoaks – doesn’t even exist.
It also happens to be Danny McLoughlin’s home city. Watching him in action, it soon becomes apparent that Chester has done something good for once in its life. Forget your Roman forts and fancy fucking zoo – the biggest attraction is owning the Comedy Store stage on a wet Mancunian night.
McLoughlin’s brand of humour is a combination of wry observation and clever self-parody verging on the surreal. For instance, he’ll refer to Chester being so white “I have to drive three miles if I want a can of Rubicon”, and then go on to transform his primary school into a Norway under-9s badminton team of various -ssons.
As for his observational stuff, a significant portion delves into retrospective nostalgia. But don’t assume it to be well-worn Peter Kay ‘oo remembers’ stuff, because that’s far from the case. There’s no remembering for remembering’s sake. It’s all superbly crafted and relevant to extremely relevant issues.
His material on erstwhile TV show Gladiator acts as a comment on the bizarre racist undertones of names such as ‘Shadow’ and ‘Nightshade’; a brilliantly impromptu Disney riff (following heckles from a man dressed as Nemo) turns into a critique of Sleeping Beauty (“It’s proper weird kissing a sleeping woman – at least give her a nudge…”)
It’s all delivered with a poetic cadence and easy charm. In fact his likeable charisma is one of McLoughlin’s great strengths, that and his ready wit and disarming self-depreciation. He borrows an almost Aherne-ian trick of portraying himself as slightly dimmer than he really is, whilst slipping in clever asides to remind you that you’re being played.
McLoughlin is multi-layered, witty, exciting and superb value. You’ll be desperate for a second visit. Nothing like Chester then.
We saw Danny McLoughlin at the Comedy Store in Manchester. You can find out more about his future dates here.
