Review: Chris Parker's How I Felt show is the comedy show you need

Chris Parker is as good as telling yarns as he is at stabbing yarn and his comedy live felting show is an experience not to be missed. Photo / Supplied

I can't say I have spent many Friday nights watching a live comedy felting show. I haven't spent any in fact. I haven't watched live comedy felting on any Saturday nights either, or in fact any day, time or even alternate universe.

I admit, before I went to Chris Parker's How I Felt show at the Theatre Royal on Friday night, I wasn't worried about the lack of live comedy felting shows in my life, but now? Now, I feel I have been missing out on something essential all this time.

Of course, before Chris Parker put this show together, there wasn't exactly a wide range of live comedy felting shows to attend, in fact, there weren't any.

And it turns out that is actually a real shame, because Friday's show was everything I never knew I needed to watch. Chris Parker's hilarious monologues were as funny as they were true. As he touched upon everything from the differences between millennials and Gen Zs to the lack of taste in multimillion-dollar mansions in his trademark high-speed monologues, the laughter from the audience never paused.

Neither did his hands. Throughout it all, Chris was also needle felting. That is, the art of creating something, in this case a cute panda holding a handbag, using a needle and wool. Instructions on the internet talk about how the needles cause the wool fibres to bind together as you twist it through the wool. Chris's live demonstration is more about wildly stabbing at the wool with your needle while looking in the opposite direction to talk to your audience about shop assistants called Debbie. The internet instructions might get a better end result (the aforementioned cute panda holding a handbag did in fact turn out more like a demented panda with wings, extra long legs and wearing a crown) but Chris's show is the winner when it comes to telling yarns while stabbing yarn.

The show is also the winner when it comes to fantastic comedy. The laughs come faster than his needle stabs the wool at times. His clever way of finding humour in the everyday and identifying the comedy in mundane things (we're looking at you, weird wicker balls in expensive houses), wrapped up in a package complete with daft songs and those cute - or demented - felted creatures makes for a brilliant show.

In one of his many hyperspeed monologues, he observes that everyone can create art but not everyone should. That may be right, and the same possibly applies to comedy felting shows, but one thing I am sure of is that Chris Parker absolutely should keep on doing what he is doing when it comes to comedy, felting and just generally being himself.