Review: Al Murray, Royal Concert Hall

October 23 2010

IT was the oddest heckle I’d heard at any comedy show. And it seemed to mark a turning point.

Al Murray has been doing The Pub Landlord character for more than a decade and some might think he should move on. But the narrow-minded Brit behind the bar can be as good as live comedy gets - largely due to Murray’s knack of playing with the front row.

On Saturday night he’d been doing just that for 45 minutes.

There were “the scroats” Brad and Mitchell: “You should be doing a post office right now”, he said. There was ‘Elvis’, the 19-year-old out with his dad, given £20 to go and buy him a pint. Which he dutifully did, to great  approval.

Ditto the cone of chips that cost Ed a tenner.

Murray needs very little prepared material . In fact, when he resorts to it, he’s not as good.

It was during such a routine, about people being “bonkers mental”, when the backdrop changed from the Union Jack to a red-eyed Pope, that the mood shifted.

He had just begun to touch on child-abuse in the Catholic church, when he was interrupted by someone on the first balcony, shouting “that happened to me and it’s not funny.”

Murray was caught off guard. What could he say?

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He rightly pointed out he wasn’t making fun of the abused but criticising the Pope’s attitude towards it.

There were a few seconds of odd silence then Murray moved on. But it seemed to have unnerved everyone.

The pace of the delivery ebbed, the laughs weren’t as abundant.

He tied off nicely with his theory of animals with hands (it’s the meerkats)  but I bet there was only one thing people were talking about down their local yesterday lunchtime.

Al Murray

October 2010

I’m on tour so you’ll find me going to the stage door where the bins are, I’ll do a show, come out and go for a drink in the hotel. It’s an invigorating life when you’re on tour.

Tonight I’m in Dublin, which is a bit lethal on a Friday night. I expect we will consume Guinness. I say ‘we’, that’s me and my tour manager.

Tomorrow I’ve a show in London near to where I live so that might be a quieter one.

I have kids but I’m divorced. They live at the other end of the road so it’s not a disaster. We’ll probably hang out during the day, go to town or see a movie or walk by the river.

They’re 11 and seven, both girls. My eldest is in to Facebook, for God’s sake. Like everybody. I won’t let them on Twitter, even though I’m on there.

I do go to the cinema but I get this whole ‘you look like a tall, thin Al Murray’. People think I’m short and fat because of the telly.

The last film I went to the cinema to see was Inception. It’s too long and there are too many moments where they stop and explain what’s going on. You know what, I was listening at the start, you don’t need to tell me again. It was good but it certainly wasn’t as good as The Dark Knight, which I thought was amazing.

For TV, I’m mad about Mad Men. I’m a big fan of Horrible Histories. It’s one of the funniest things on telly and bizarre and educational at the same time.

And I’m a news junkie. I’m finding the news and politics really brilliant at the moment because no-one knows what’s going on. The experts are getting it wrong every time. No-one predicated the election result, no-one predicted what this government would do... it’s all off whack. And they can’t bear it because it’s not what they’re used to.

Although I was on Hell’s Kitchen it’s always been about the eating, not the cooking. My tour manager has the Michelin Guide so we always try and eat well wherever we go. It’s a little hobby of ours. The last time we were in Nottingham it was at Hart’s restaurant, which is really nice.

That said we do go to Burger King now and again. Last year there was a moment where I snapped and went in to KFC. I remember it vividly.

To keep fit? I run up and down the stage for an hour and three quarters shouting at people. I can heartily recommend it. Either that or I’ll go for a long walk.

I’ve got an iPad so I can bring ten books on the road with me. At the moment it’s Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, which is very good. Other than music, history is my big interest outside of comedy.

I can’t go to gigs because I do gigs. Once you become a full-time stand-up comic you have a very peculiar relationship with entertainment. You become what people do for entertainment at the weekend. I used to have this thing where I’d take a Friday off every six months, ring my mates and go ‘I’m free on Friday’. They’d say ‘so what, I’m staying in, I went out last weekend’.

So I don’t go out to as many gigs as I’d like to because I can’t.

I like playing music. It’s the same with comedy, I’m much more interested in doing it than watching it.

I play drums. I’ve played in a lot of bands. At the moment I’m in a rock ‘n’ roll covers band called T34 and we dress up as Russians. We played Download in the summer. It was ace. It rained so our tent was full.

A perfect weekend I’d be hanging out with the kids, a good movie and an Indian in the evening, a walk by the river on the Sunday morning in nice weather - and maybe half an hour playing the drums.

Al Murray’s The Pub Landlord Tour comes to the Royal Concert Hall on Saturday October 23. Tickets are £25, call 0115 989 5555. The Pub Landlord’s Great British Pub Quiz Book is available now. A DVD, Barrel of Fun, will be released November 22. Visit www.thepublandlord.co.uk for details.

Al Murray, Arena

April 30 2009



IT is probably not the best idea to stroll in late to a comedy gig. Particularly when the press seats that have been reserved for you are -- and this has never happened before -- in the second row.
Of course, he had me. Something about brown shoes and excrement.
Fortunately, that was it for me.
No so lucky were Shrek, lambasted for having a wife way out of his league and the health and safety officer who has a lot to do with the state of “broken Britain.” Then there was the old fella, the hairy young people (“the scroats”), the girl who was with her dad and his wife but it’s not her mum... and the chap directly in front who sold green roofs, apparently.
Over 15 years, Al Murray’s Pub Landlord has graduated from the few hundred that saw him at Just The Tonic, to the cavernous Arena. His first time here. And while it isn’t a sell-out (3,500 is a fair estimate), you have to consider that just three months ago he sold out the Royal Concert Hall.
The bigger space didn’t seem to phase Britain’s funniest character comic. No I’m not including the Multiple Personality Disorder sketch show. You understand.
The set of four giant hand pumps, beer barrels and obligatory bar -- and the two video screens for those at the back to catch his facial contortions -- were as important as the one liners about God being British, the battle of the sexes, the Lucky List and the 2012 Olympics (it’s going to be sh...)
He closes the two-and-half-hour show (there’s a 20 minute interval soundtracked by his favourite Queen songs) with a singalong about the state of Britain -- “if we’re gonna go down, we’re gonna go down together” -- during which he leads an all-female conga.
Yep, still Britain’s best.
And it turns out I was sat next to Big Bob, Big Bob, Big Bob....

Al Murray

April 2009

ANDREW will remember the last time Al Murray came to town.
He was the poor chap who had The Pub Landlord inches from his face repeatedly screaming "Where's the ******* money?"
He'd admitted that he was actually a financial adviser, you see.
It's an integral part of Murray's show to banter with the crowd and on this particular night Trevor, Stella, Simon, Marina, Amber, Anthony and fuzzy-haired Tom had all been subjected to his barracking.
But Andrew came in for special treatment, with the giant comic clambering over seats to hold him responsible for the credit crunch.
And don't think you'll be safe when he's on a bigger stage next week, making his debut at the Trent FM Arena, where he plans to "bug the security staff" by wading into the crowd.
"Sometimes but generally people get into the spirit of it," says Murray, when I ask if anyone has ever reacted angrily or started crying.
One of the reasons he is one of Britain's best stand-ups is because of this ability to riff off a crowd. It's something the Hell's Kitchen winner finds is a doddle.
"I've been doing this for 15 years, so the spontaneity comes easy. The chances are I've been in the situation before. I don't know who the people are but I can always move on to someone else if the situation's not working out."
Isn't he surprised that when asked for their occupation, they admit to being, say, a tax officer or a banker or a student, knowing they'll get a hiding?
"Well it's part of the game, isn't it?" says Murray. "Everyone's in on it. They're in on the fun."
Not that it works every time. After our review of his February date appeared online, one punter commented: "I for one will not go to see Al Murray again, I found him to be a bit of a bore who doesn't know when a joke stops being funny."
While he may have nearly 3,000 people in stitches, the few that don't enjoy it do get to him, he admits. "Any comedian will tell you, you can have a whole room laughing and there's one person with a sour face and you end up trying to make them laugh."
Murray was a regular at Just The Tonic Comedy Club when it was housed at the Old Vic, then Cabaret, in Fletcher Gate. He remembers it well.
"The room was a bit weird because the stage was in the middle and everyone is to your left or right. But it was always good fun to do."
Such has been the popularity of his shows that The Pub Landlord is opening up on arena stages. So how will the show differ from the one at the Royal Concert Hall? "We're putting screens in," he says simply. "The show is the same."
Although he's expanded his repertoire with a glut of new characters in the BBC sketch show Multiple Personality Disorder, he has no plans to put his patriotic pint puller to rest.
"Certainly not. It's just another thing I do. To be honest, it's a perfectly logical extension to the landlord. I'm a character comedian. Just because I'm having success with one character doesn't mean I can't do other things."
The idea of a tour for those characters, however, remains less clear.
"We've talked about it but there'd be a lot of hanging around while they're changing sets or I'm in make up. So I don't know. Stand-up travels light."
So how are the public reacting to the new characters. Have they been shouting out catch phrases in the street?
"Not yet. Well I haven't been out on the street much. I've been in the car or hotel rooms. I'm still waiting to find out."

Al Murray, Trent FM Arena, Nottingham, Thursday April 30, 8pm.