Last night Phil and I went to Ipswich Regent to see Mark Watson. His show is called “Do I know you?”, and it is loosely based around the idea that lots of people come up to him asking him “Do I know you?” because he’s been on various different TV programmes (Mock the Week, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You etc) but isn’t sufficiently famous for people to really recognise him.
Anyway, the show was absolutely hilarious. Probably even better than the last time. About ten minutes before the show started he came onto the stage and starting talking to the audience via a laptop (he was typing stuff out). That was good fun. Then the first half was quite random – he spent quite a lot of time in the audience chasing someone, or at least, trying to find out why someone had left! And a lot of time trying to backpedal about places which he’d been to but found out people in the audience were from. As with before, when you go to see Mark Watson you feel like you’re not going to see a polished performance – but in a good way. It’s much more personal. He said he didn’t do much of the planned material for the first half, but actually I quite like that – you get a unique show, rather than a pre-packaged thing. In that case you might as well buy the DVD. (That said, I think I’d always prefer live comedy to comedy on DVD.)
The only ‘problem’ I found wasn’t really a problem, but he didn’t have a warm-up act. I think this did mean that people took a little bit longer to get into, the first half hour or so was a bit quiet, but then people got warmed up and the laughter came much more easily. The second half was brilliant – he talked about becoming a dad which had me almost literally rolling around on the floor laughing. All in all it was a top night – hilarious!
Afterwards he was signing copies of his book (‘Eleven’ – a very good read, by the way, I don’t think I’ve reviewed it here but well worth getting) in the foyer, so we stuck around to get my copy signed. When we got to the front of the queue, I said to him that I’d been reading his blog from day one, and gave him a biro (Phil also had a biro for him too). He seemed to appreciate it! Then, when he asked for my name to sign the book… he remembered my surname! I comment on his blog from time to time, and he actually remembered that my name has two ‘L’s and what my surname was. What a nice guy. This is one of the reasons Phil and I like him so much – he’s not only very funny, he seems like the kind of guy who we would naturally get on very well with. Maybe one day we’ll get to have a chat, that would be really cool. Just from reading his blog I feel like I know him pretty well, which is something you don’t get with many comedians.
Anyway, that’s all from me. If you do get a chance to see him, he’s on tour over the next few weeks – do make the effort, it will be worth it! (Well, it will if you have a similar sense of humour to me anyway). And there you have it 🙂
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