Off to see the Izzard

[venta]

Yesterday, Frances and I escaped out of work mid-afternoon, and hurled ourselves up a series of motorways to Samantha's house. For once, the M40 obligingly didn't turn out to be stuffed full of horrible traffic, and we made reasonable time: with a quick detour to an off-licence, we were in Samantha's kitchen by about quarter to seven.

Chaos was ensuing there, with Samantha trying to cook dinner, Andy carrying random white goods round the house (I never did quite work out why) and S's parents wombling around vaguely having had a hard day clearing the house they're selling. I got handed a pan of boiled eggs to shell, which kept me out of mischief.

Dinner on the table, wine opened, both consumed, out again, into Andy's car and off for Nottingham, where we were going to see Eddie Izzard. As Frances said on the way out: "Mmmm. Wine. Mmmm. Tasty food. Mmmm. Eddie Izzard. Sometimes life doesn't suck."

We found all the traffic that hadn't been on the M40. It was all in Nottingham. All of it. According to the Nottingham Arena's website, we wanted to follow signs for the city centre, then follow signs for the Arena . Simple ? You'd think - fortunately, we had a map, and directions from Samantha's mum. Fifteen minutes before the gig was due to start, we were (we believed) relatively close to the Arena, but moving at a rate of a yard every minute or so, and no idea where to park. I bailed out of the car and went exploring, fortunately finding free street-side parking. We walked round to the Arena in a couple of minutes. Throughout this entire process, we saw exactly no signs for the damn place.

Then the fun started. My ticket said on it:
BLOCK BBC
O 45

Which we read as "Block O, seat 45". Not a problem, till we discovered the Blocks were numbered 1-20. We asked the people selling programs: they had no idea, they believed the blocks had just been changed from letters to numbers, we should ask the bar staff.

The bar staff looked blank, why the hell should they know ?

Making a wild stab, we thought we'd try Block 14, you know, O being the 14th letter and all.

We found an information desk, I asked - apparently we were Block BBC, not Block O. The lady turned away, I pointed out this still didn't help, which of Blocks 1-20 was that ? She was slightly exasperated - Block BBC was "the floor", of course.

We headed into the central section (like the stalls, so presumably the floor), and finally found some staff who were prepared to direct us. Out again, round a bit, in through another door, down some stairs, past about seven different Row Os, til eventually someone was prepared to admit to knowing where our seats were.

So, Mr Izzard live: very funny, of course. But... I'm not sure comedy necessarily works like bands. I'm not really that sure that it was a significantly better experience than watching the video which will no doubt be released of the tour. Since the options were to watch the teeny tiny little man on the stage, or the big video projection behind him, this feeling was probably amplified.

This was the first gig of the English tour (he's been in America, presumably with the same show), but some stuff was obviously material-for-the-English-market, and he hadn't quite ironed out the this-is-bizarre-but-funny/ this-is-just-bizarre-and-a-bit-flat areas. Some chunks of the show really were a bit "eh?" - but others were hilarious.

Good evening, all in all... I laughed a lot. We even were filled with sufficient bonhomie that we did not beat to death the people in front of us who got progressively drunker and talked loudly all the way through the second half. (Pay over twenty quid for a ticket, then get ratted, so you won't remember it, and not listen anyway? I don't understand people.)

Oh, and I like either his, or the Arena's, choice of music: Pulp and the Ramones while we were waiting. Beatles in the interval, which I'm less bothered about, then they went back to playing Different Class. Which I really must buy myself another copy of.

Comments

Live Comedy

[thegreenman.livejournal.com]

I saw Bill Bailley at the Hexagon a cople of years ago, pretty good evening although much of the material wasn't new - it must be difficult for comics who get substantial tv airtime to come up with lots of original material for a live show. They seem rely a lot on adding local colour and add libbing.

Re: Live Comedy

[venta.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly, this was apparently entirely new material. At least, it was nothing any of the four of us had heard before.

Re: Live Comedy

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Is this the Sexie tour still? If so, I think the DVD's already out, or due out for Christmas, or some such.

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

Go and see Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure. Don't even stop to think about it, just buy the tickets for whichever venue has tickets left, and go.

Is my advice :-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not anti live comedy. Went to see Adam Hills in London a couple of weeks ago, and he was absolutely fantastic. I suspect, to be honest, this may just be a generalisation of my "I don't like really big gigs" grumble.

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Comedy definately doesn't work in big gigs. Unfortunately, if Izzard did small gigs he'd have to spend a week in one location, otherwise there'd be rioting when the tickets go on sale. And, hey, you can fleece 20,000 people all at the same time, instead of 5 thousand over the course of a week...</cynical>

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Tour dates - still seats left for the December 3rd show at the Carling Apollo Hammersmith, but that's the only London gig left. (There's a show in Birmingham, too, but Birmingham is rather harder to get to from Oxford than London, even though it's quicker.)

Last Friday night he was in Darlington, you know. I would've gone had it not sold out long before I found out about it. The next nearest places he's playing are Halifax and Edinburgh, both of which are slightly off-puttingly far for my wallet. Hopefully he'll tour again, or there might be a TV version, or something; I'm in two minds about whether to get the book when it comes out at the start of 2004 or not.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

You're right. All the traffic was in Nottingham. And there are no signs to the Arena, including on the Arena itself... Hence how Marc and I (neither of us having any knowledge of Nottingham at all) ended up queuing for an age to find parking (after driving all around The Arena), finding it, and showing up at the front entrance The Arena waving our "The Dandy Warhols at Rock City, Nottingham" tickets expecting to get in... Not a single fucking sign indiccating what that building that was obviously a venue of some description was meant to be.

Rock City turned out to be the dingiest venue in the entire city, but was much more appropriate for an only moderately popular indie/grunge band in this country.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I got handed a pan of boiled eggs to shell, which kept me out of mischief.

I can't help but feel that this betrays a shocking lack of imagination on your part.