CityLife

Rhod Gilbert and The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst

Rhod Gilbert
Buxton Opera House
November 2, 2009

WHEN your complimentary water offers you a massive clue to your location, it really is quite a faux pas to get your greeting wrong. “Good evening, Burton,” yells Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert from behind the curtains to a muted cheer of recognition.

By the time he makes it on stage, he’s consulted Wikipedia to blind us with knowledge about the spa town – facts he throws out at a million miles an hour before finishing with a smug grin to pause for applause.

Rapid relays of incredulous outrage are Gilbert’s shtick, at the most inanimate of objects to the darkest recesses of his inner psyche. His vacuum cleaner and washing machine come in for the most aggressive deconstruction in his latest show, replacing the award-winning mince pie that sent him over the edge in his last live tour. 

The mince pie makes a welcome return, though, setting up the premise for this year’s show – that the infamous incident in Knutsford services lost him his flat, his girlfriend, his agent and his relationship with his parents, finally putting him in anger management and on the psychiatrist’s couch for hypnosis.

Short and sweet

But far from being the grumblings of a man refusing to keep up with the 21st century, the machines he rages against show up insights about human nature.

His tale of feigning nonchalance to trick his washing machine into clicking sooner for instance, strikes a chord with everyone. 

It is, though, his Welsh material that reduces people to tears. A skit on the optimism of Cardiff’s growing alfresco dining culture is hard to beat, but his observations are just as satisfying when short and sweet: “There’s a sign on the way into Neath that says, ‘Kill our children, not your speed’,” he quips.

A hit and miss second half precedes a shaky encore, saved by a spot of ‘jokeyoke’ when Gilbert turns requests for his famous missing luggage and duvet sketches into a Eddie Izzard-style conglomerate of invading characters and muddled circumstances.

He may not like the Basil Fawlty comparisons, but there’s no comedian more steadfastly mounted on his high horse than Gilbert. We can only hope he never feels the need to dismount.

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