CityLife

Justin to play the Big I Am on Radio 4

RADIO STAR: Moorhouse

IN this - so far one-off but surely sufficiently ripe an idea to spore a full series - half hour show Justin Moorhouse combines his stand up material with sketches to ask a big old question, is he good Dad?

Moorhouse is a well-known figure in Manchester and indeed across the North West.

He started out in stand up in 1999 soon breaking away from the open mic circuit when he won the CityLife Comedian of the Year Competition in 2000 (Alan Carr was a finalist that year too) and coincidentally began filming the part of Young Kenny for the first series of Phoenix Nights the very next day.

He never looked back – firstly headlining on the comedy circuit then moving up to doing his own tours. As well as penning a regular column for City Life, he presents a show on Key 103 in the afternoons and has taken August off to head to the Edinburgh festival fringe for the last two years.

Nor is this his only Radio 4 outing as he also wrote a play An Insurance Inspector Calls.

This effort though is on more familiar territory for Moorhouse taking material from his stand up routines about being a Dad; material prompted by questions he asked himself having fathered and lived with Justin Junior for a number of years he split from Jnr’s mum and found himself about to be a dad for the second time with his girlfriend Catherine.

Being about Dads, notes Moorhouse at the top of the show, makes it for everyone – ‘except orphans’ perhaps and in the absence of a how to manual for Dads he works out the best thing to do through asking his Nana who lives in her own barmpot world in ‘Splendid Isolation’ (nursing home) where she indulges her love of 1970s soft porn.

After all he doesn’t want to end up like his own father who left when he was four (and wore bad shoes) leaving Moorhouse to be brought up instead by his mother and much-loved step-father.

Nor does he want to end up like one of those Fathers for Justice fellas with green painted tangerine grenades sewed onto his belt. So off he whisks Justin Junior for a cultured trip to Paris where Justin Snr nearly meets a breathless death on the steps up to the Eiffel Tower.

It’s an engaging, laugh-out loud show full of good-natured, frank and teasing comedy – even when talking about his former mother-in-law.

The sketches that intersperse the stand up feature Janice Connolly (AKA Mrs Barbara Nice) as, amongst others, Moorhouse’s delightfully dotty Nana, John Thomson voices his inquisitive son Justin Junior and Steve Edge is his Dad.

They give an added dimension to the action, fleshing out the already multi-dimensional characters of Moorhouse’s writing.

We reckon neither of the Moorhouse juniors have anything to worry about.

Justin Moorhouse - The Big Am I airs on Radio 4 on Wednesday, January 28 at 6.30pm.