Live comedy: Jasper Carrott
Swan Theatre, Worcester
Thursday 1st August 2024
I was looking forward to catching Jasper Carrott live and the audience around me were not disappointed. I had grown up with his live albums, appreciating the meandering stories and can warmly recall them verbatim. On the night, the warmth that greeted Carrott was not only generated by the low summer sun.
JC started performing originally in his own folk club in Birmingham in the late 60s. As the club’s MC the banter and jokes, between songs and performers, became more prominent and Jasper Carrott’s comedy career was born. Having forged a background in a folk club it is clear he is used to being in front of a live audience. Carrott knows his audience and his audience knew what to expect.
Carrott’s jokes are based in the every day. The settings of his jokes – build-up and punchline – are the golf course, the pub, the garden, the airport and the hotel. These are jokes for an audience that have grown up with Carrott and whose lifestyle mirrors his. Gone are the anecdotal sketches to be replaced with punch line after punch line. The routine revolving around the golf course which included the punchlines “suppository” and “hearing aid” delivered a hole in one – for many. “The nutter on the bus” routine was now just a distant memory.
One or two memories in the impressive Swan Theatre had also forgotten the near memory. When the comedian denounced the Labour party after being in charge for three weeks already, sections of the sell-out crowd…booed. His insistence that “beer will now have 35% vat on the price and no doubt we will have to pay a tax to leave the building” – brought forth chuckles that told us much about the audience.
Much of the audience in attendance were clearly loyal to Carrott. There were no real heckles, no sticky moments and no need to win over the crowd; they had come to laugh and laugh they did. Carrott enjoyed himself so much he over ran for the first half. It is just as well Jasper Carrott enjoyed himself, as the comedian has two more nights at the Swan theatre performing to sell-out crowds. Carrott packs them in like Ryanair lines…”I was on a Ryanair flight once and they appealed for a Dr, due to a medical emergency. A Dr? Using Ryanair? You must be joking! No Drs use Ryanair. We had passengers walking up and down the aisles begging for loose change.”
Honestly, you just had to have been there.
By: The Swilgate Scuttler