All posts tagged Toby Hadoke

Seymour Mace – XS Malarkey – 17/01/2012

by J.Dean on January 24, 2012 in Gigs, Reviews with 2 Comments
Seymour Mace Pic

Crispy Comedy Cuts writer Jonathon Dean reviews a very special night of comedy at Manchester’s critically acclaimed XS Malarkey club night. The event took place at XS Malarkey’s new home Platt Chapel and featured performances from Seymour Mace, Sarah Millican and Toby Hadoke.

“I’ve never killed a man!” seems a strange choice for a catch-phrase, but it’s one that compère Toby Hadoke somehow found himself adopting for the evening. His usual charmingly eccentric and blustering self peppering the warm-up and linking sections with self-commentary, and bringing the new sections of the audience on-side – those of us who are regulars at the club already know and love Toby, but those turning up primarily to see a celebrity guest for cheap take a little more convincing.

Taking up the open spots were James Meehan, whose friendly, cheeky style warmed the crowd up nicely, and Matt Hollins, whose amiable personality and humble, self-deprecating remarks kept the crowd happy to watch him, but unfortunately his routine was filled with well-worn subjects for comedy, making it difficult to stand out for an XS audience so used to attending comedy shows.

The high-profile act pulling in the crowd for the evening was Sarah Millican, testing out material for her new television show, and while the club does not announce guests of her profile (preferring to ensure the regulars are able to attend), a few tweets brought some new faces to Platt Chapel. As is usually the case when new material is being tested, it was a stop-start affair, with lots of rifling through notebooks – but her commentary rescued it from getting uninteresting. She went down a storm (and was it ever going to be any other way?), and although I was wary about her performing the same club two weeks in a row becoming stale, the different jokes she brought to the table allayed my fears.

Headlining the evening was strangeness enthusiast, backing-dancer impersonator, and all-round bonkernaut, Seymour Mace (Craig/Steve in BBC Three’s Ideal), who was, as per usual, the highlight of the evening. His surreal style and manic, borderline psychotic delivery started the audience off on the back foot. Confused reactions and nervous giggles eventually gave way to roaring laughter as the humour of his act gradually dawned on them.

Following a TV personality like Sarah Millican can be a daunting prospect for any comic – particularly when they have wildly diverging styles. I’ve seen great acts bomb before, because their humour was so starkly different from the rest of the comics on the bill, but Seymour Mace skilfully turned the initial hesitant reaction from those portions of the crowd unfamiliar with him into waves of laughter – earning himself the biggest applause of the evening.

There’s a reason XS Malarkey has won so many awards; it manages line-ups like this, crowds as friendly and welcoming as any comic could hope for, and door prices a fraction of the price of most other clubs. So three cheers to all the people who volunteer their time and effort to keeping it that way!

XS Malarkey Comedy Club #Manchester

by J.Dean on November 14, 2011 in Gigs, Reviews with 4 Comments
XS Marakey Banner

Introducing the first of many Manchester comedy updates from Jonathon Dean, the latest addition to the Crispy Comedy Cuts blogging team. He dives straight in with this review of the critically acclaimed XS Malarkey Comedy Club.

Celebrating its 14th birthday this year, Manchester’s award-winning XS Malarkey recently made its triumphant return after a long summer hiatus. Despite its new home at Platt Chapel, Fallowfield, and some new faces in its student-heavy audience, it manages to retain that wonderful niceness that separates XS Malarkey from your everyday comedy club.

Your host, as ever, is the loveable Toby Hadoke, who is regarded as something of a national treasure by the club’s regulars. His friendly, often bewildered demeanour and self-deprecating remarks about his own fashion faux-pas and personal eccentricities help to underline Malarkey’s down-to-earth feel and eschewing of the bland, scathing corporate slickness to which many other comedy clubs aspire.

The club’s determination to offer the opening slots to acts that are new to the circuit has plenty of advantages; as well as injecting new blood into the circuit, it helps to keep the door costs down (£3 for members, £5 for non-members, with a lifetime membership costing a scant £8!), and also means that established acts remember the club from their early days and are happy to return the favour. Regular patrons have been treated to acts like John Bishop, Jason Manford and Jack Whitehall, for the same door price as any other comic.

Platt Chapel and XS Malarkey seem to be a match made in heaven. The self-confessed “community hub” of Platt Chapel, with its volunteer staff and “everyone pitch-in together” approach suits XS Malarkey’s non-profit, newcomer-friendly and fan-loyal ethos down to the ground, bending over backwards to accommodate the club’s many supporters.

It’s a far cry from the pub-venues the club has previously had, who seemingly cared little about the evening as anything other than a device for bringing in punters to the bar – to the point where the previous venue, the (now defunct) Queen of Hearts, didn’t so much as provide heating during last year’s frostbitten winter months. The new venue is a little pricier behind the bar (as many of the student patrons have remarked) but with all the effort and enthusiasm the Chapel’s team bring to the evening, and the sense that the revenue is doing something other than lining a manager’s pockets, it feels somehow better that way.