Alan Carr: Specsy Beast: The Sands Centre, Carlisle, 2011
Alan Carr: Yap! Yap! Yap! The Sands Centre, Carlisle, 2015
Always Be Comedy (2 shows): The Tommyfield pub, Kennington, London, 2018
Alan Carr: Not Again! Work in Progress: 2Northdown, London, 2020
Alan Carr has a flamboyant camp charm that is extremely endearing to an audience. I have seen him live in Carlisle with his two tours Specsy Beast in 2011 and Yap! Yap! Yap! in 2015.
The shows both included his trademark self –depreciating putdowns, effortlessly hilarious and warm interaction with the audience and funny stories about the city itself. Clearly his research had been done because the audience instantly recognised the places he was talking about. He has a heightened, exaggerated delivery and he intuitively says whet is on his mind. This woven with relevant and funny material made for two great shows by the popular comedy star.
After announcing in advance that Always Be Comedy will feature a very special guest who was a household name and had never played the club before, the front row where I sat at a May 2018 showcase was taking bets as to who the guest would be. I went for Michael McIntyre and there was talk of Rhod Gilbert or Jimmy Carr, all very funny popular comedians in their own right. The fact that when MC James Gill introduced Alan Carr on stage, this made everybody very happy and excited and Carr did not disappoint. Featuring new material for a possible tour, when he walked on to massive cheers, he was extremely funny and after a twenty-minute set left everyone helpless with laughter. It was a privilege to see the great comedy star in a wonderful comic setting.
Carr made a welcome return to Always Be Comedy in December 2018 where he performed a full work-in-progress show for his upcoming 2019 tour. He proved once again that he was a naturally funny man on stage with the audience instantly taking to his warmth and cheekiness. It was a joy to watch the great comedian provide an hour of belly laughs.
I wanted to make a visit to 2Northdown, a comedy club I had not been to before and saw advertised that Alan Carr was performing a work-in-progress set for his new tour Not Again! In the show he talked about celebrity and fame and how far he had come with his career, With brilliant put-downs and superb delivery, the naturally funny man made the audience continuously laugh and cheer.