CityLife

Jim Jeffries: The Hits

Jim Jeffries

Jim Jeffries
Royal Exchange Theatre
October 25, 2009

RARELY is Jim Jeffries written about without the word ‘controversial’ being employed.

Outspoken he certainly is – indeed a particularly cutting heckle put down resulted in him being punched in the head at the Comedy Store in this very city – but you’ll be hard pushed to find a stand-up show with more pathos than this Aussie comedian’s.

Returning to Britain after moving to Los Angeles, this tour, ‘The Hits’, was intended as a showcase of his best bits but has ended up a mixture of old and new material.

Following a 20-minute opener from Tiernan Douieb who ably mastered his debut appearance in the round, Jeffries takes to the circular space himself.

He begins with an affectionate nod to his former hometown of Manchester, a place he still loves despite the aforementioned punching incident and a horrifically violent burglary at his house in Whalley Range.

It’s an incident that he sometimes talks about on stage, but not tonight.

Edgy

Such a story is typical of Jeffries – most of his material is based in reality, which is what provides him with his trademark brutally frank style.

He displays this approach to full effect when he retells how comedy was all-important in his father’s reaction to being told of the abuse Jeffries and a friend had been subjected to by their scoutmaster.

It’s a story that sits surprisingly comfortably alongside some more light-hearted, self-deprecating anecdotes about meeting various celebrities, an inevitable result of his increasing fame.

But the centrepiece is a 22-minute story at the heart of his set that encapsulates all that is good about Jeffries – a potentially edgy tale of how he took a childhood friend suffering in the later stages of muscular dystrophy to a prostitute because his life-long condition had made it difficult for him to go out with girls and he was still a virgin at 32.

As Jeffries notes, you need to stay with him through the initial devastatingly sad introduction to the story but the end result is one of life-affirming beauty that simultaneously manages to be unbelievably funny.

Simply magnificent.