It’s not often that we are persuaded to judge a comedy final with the prospect of beer and pizza as payment, but when it’s the Leicester Square theatre new comedian of the year competition, mine’s a pepperoni.
Last night 14 acts performed their best five minutes of material and competed to win the New Comedian of the Year title and certificate, £1000 and the coveted (and not yet arrived due to estimated delivery times on Black Friday weekend) trophy.
Spots were drawn from a hat and in some freakish form of coincidence, all of the four women in this competition final were pitted against each other in the first act. Hmm…
Crowd warmed by the ever brilliant Richard Herring, it was Jo D’arcy that kicked us off, regaling us with tales from her days as a secondary school Spanish teacher and the profanities that lead to her being fired. Then was the turn of Bilal Zafar, first runner up in this competition, who delighted the audience with his account of his recent Twitter war about a fictional Muslim only bakery. The next lady to perform was multi-lingual Louise Reay, who performed her entire clown set in Chinese with the help of hilarious placards, a bearded member of the audience and a headless toy baby.
Then it was the turn of the winner of the BBC New Comedian competition, Yuriko Kotani, a Japanese comic who has been living in London for eight years and commented on the British love of being just about on time, rather than the Japanese alternative of actually being on time. Yuiziko bagged third place and left with £250 in this competition, so our congratulations to her! The final women in the competition was Svetlana the Oligarch’s Wife, a character act apparently based on Laura Bodell’s own employer (allegedly…). Svetlana is married to a Russian billionaire and is trying her hand at stand up to give her something to do. She recites jokes that she’s heard in other comedy clubs, but gives them a nouveau riche twist.
After the interval and nine more male acts, it was LJ Da Funk and his intelligent gangsta act who the judges agreed was the funniest act of the evening and had the audience eating out the palm of his hand. Even his entrance on to the stage through the middle of the back curtain singled him out from the rest and when you can make an audience finish your sentence with what is effectively the same joke done three times, you know you’re on to a winner.
It was a brilliant night, headlined by last year’s winner Josh Ross and perfectly produced by David Hardcastle and the Leicester Square theatre team. Congratulations to all the acts that got through to the final and in particular the winners who have bright futures ahead of them.
