At: The Mandalay, Auckland
Review: Peter Calder
Compendium shows like this are good news for punters in a comedy festival.
We get to comparison-shop before entering into serious relationships with individual entertainers.
But by the time the line-up of new British talent in this TV2 International Laugh! Festival event had finished last night it
was no easier to decide who to spend a whole evening with.
Some claimed to be jet-lagged (host Ben Norris complained of the flu as well, although there wasn't much sign of it in his genial warm-up work) but all hit the ground running and dripping the self-assurance of seasoned professionals.
Nick Wilty's plea for hecklers ("I need the practice") rather frightened an audience with first-night nerves but once we'd worked out what he was saying ("This is my accent; I'm not putting it on to sound thick") we warmed to his clever line in quizzical pugnacity.
It will be hard to shake the image of a man outsmarting persistent Istanbul carpet hucksters at 3 am by asking them if they know where he can buy some lino.
John Moloney got the thick end of five minutes' laughter from two (well, one and a half really) one-liners and a smug look before he even got started, dark, glaring, coarse and faintly demonic.
Meanwhile Jim Tavare (think Frankenstein crossed with Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil and add a penguin suit) snuggled up to his trademark double bass but was much more interested in the workings of that offence against musical sensibility, the recorder (he managed to make us all ashamed we'd ever played one) and the vacuum cleaner.
But the treat of the night was an unbilled Sean Mayo - slinky, sardonic, self-possessed and knowing.
This is a man with the Midas touch, who works his audience without ever letting us know what is happening, and who holds us - if it suits him - in the palm of his hand.
We've always known the Poms were a joke. Here's good evidence that they do too.
Best book for the lot.
The joke's on us with Brit comics
