Michael McIntyre: Live And Laughing

Introduction

It's horrific the way we treat comedians. We put them on leashes, cage them, domesticate and neuter them. It's even worse in the current climate, where every word they speak is carefully scrutinised, lest they poke an unwitting grandfather in the wrong place. It's almost saddening to see them tamed and harmless in the zoo of panel shows, thirty minutes of mirth where they compete to be witty, knowing full well that the really good bits will be censored. And then the utter ignominy of a rundown safari park that is re-run hell, in the comedian's graveyard that is Dave, where if you missed the punchline, all you have to do is wait, it'll be back in six hours. Far better the glory and grandeur of seeing them in the wild, in their natural environment, stand up. It's where time isn't an issue, where censors are shot at the door, and where they get the stage all to themselves, a couple of hours to hold an audience in the palm of their hand. And fortunately, we have the equivalent of naturalists to record them in their natural habitat, although in this case, there's no David Attenborough voiceover.


You'll probably know Michael McIntyre from the panel show circuit, he's the fresh faced posh one who pops up from time to time on shows like Mock The Week and Have I Got News For You, and the Channel 4 one whose name I never bother with, presented by Jimmy 'Marmite' Carr. In Michael McIntyre: Live & Laughing, the cameras catch his performance one night at the Hammersmith Apollo. It's 84 minutes of stand up, along with a nice extra feature to appreciate.

The Disc

A 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer that captures the performance perfectly well, and a DD 2.0 stereo track that presents no problems. The only issue is a lack of subtitles, but with McIntyre's accent verging on the Received Pronunciation, it's really only a problem for the hard of hearing.

Extras

It's back to Hammersmith for the extra feature, taken from the BBC's Live At The Apollo series. It's (obviously) the Michael McIntyre one, although it's stripped of the comic who usually presents it and trimmed down to just McIntyre's routine, 29 minutes worth.

Conclusion

A normal person can't be a comedian. He or she may be funny, but to be a comic you have to have funny bones, your mere presence should put a smile on faces, and every successful comic has a quirk, a way of being, or just a personality that appeals and entertains. Michael McIntyre reminds me of a cheeky schoolboy, just out of short trousers. He also inhabits a large vacancy, that of the apparently upper class comic. Most comedians have a working class vibe to them, a sense that their observations on life have come from the bottom looking upwards. McIntyre is more like someone who got tired of working in the accountancy firm. There's a distinct lack of anger and bite to his comedy, more a sheer joy in the absurdities of life that can be wonderfully relaxing to hear.


I don't want to comment on the routine, as that would be spoiling it, so I'll do what I usually do and describe the quantity and quality of laughs. The first and most important thing is that I did laugh, constantly, throughout the show. Admittedly the first few laughs were of the knowing chuckle variety, the 'laugh to be polite' sort of thing. You get those at the start of pretty much any routine as you settle into the flow of things. The worrying thing was that McIntyre has a rather random scattershot delivery with not a lot in the way of segues, so on more than one occasion I did reset to the knowing chuckle. Still the majority of the laughs were hearty guffaws, those laughs that come naturally, truly appreciative of the comedy, the laughs that prolong your life (or so medical research would have us believe). You laugh because you're into the show, but you don't make a fool of yourself in doing so.


But there was one agonised wheeze of a laugh, those laughs which are so intense that you begin to feel pain in your lungs and your sides, where you feel your equilibrium and balance go, and you begin to collapse to the floor because it is just so damned funny. You worry that you'll lose control over your bodily functions, and you want to the comic to pause and give you a chance to recover. For me, it was the p***ing in the sea bit, which is a worrying indicator of my juvenile state of mind.

Michael McIntyre makes your face ache. What more do you want from a stand up?