Review: Michael McIntyre worth the laughs

Michael McIntyre is a real life Energiser bunny - you just give him a push and off he goes, non-stop and at full speed. Photo / Getty Images

When did comedy get so big?

All anyone could talk about in the lead up to Michael McIntyre's gig last night was how crazy it was that he'd managed to sell out Vector Arena.

The last time I was in a fully seated Vector show with that many people was when Robert Plant came in 2013, and the atmosphere this time was surprisingly comparable.

It felt like we were at a rock concert - people bought merchandise, grabbed beers, took selfies, and when McIntyre came on, they cheered as if their favourite band had just taken the stage.

But it's just one man telling stories and doing nothing else for around an hour and a half.

For someone fairly new to the world of McIntyre (I wasn't too far across his popularity past the videos that went viral on Facebook), it was a shock.

But the fan-made videos that introduced the show were testament to this guy's star power, and I soon found out why.

The man is a real life Energiser bunny - you just give him a push and off he goes, non-stop and at full speed.

It's observational comedy, but it's broad enough that everyone can relate. Unlike that of opening act Paul Tonkinson, who at times lost me because I'm neither married nor a parent.

McIntyre though, swept through topics everyone knows well: holidaying with the family, navigating the lines at the airport, sleeping weirdly, farting, getting into swimming pools, navigating hotel rooms.

The best stories are the ones involving his kids, partly because the voices he puts on to play them are hilarious, but mostly because they're incredibly relatable - like when his kids made a movie in which they plucked up the courage to use swearwords, or when they snitched on one parent to the other.

But by far his strongest material was the New Zealand-based stuff.

He started off the show trying to do a Kiwi accent (and to his credit, he wasn't bad), mocking the way we say words like fish, six and sex before going on to employ catch phrases like "cheers bro, sweet as" and his favourite: "Gummon". All of which continued to return throughout the evening for an extra laugh or two.

Usually, I prefer the edgy, inappropriate and downright offensive type of comic - a la Jimmy Carr - but McIntyre performed a fairly wholesome set at no one's expense and with just as many laughs.

Perhaps that's how he managed to sell out Vector Arena, then.