Just Bloody Brilliant

In this reviewer’s opinion, Tim Key is one of the few popular British comedians on the circuit that actually deserves his adulation. Bringing commercial success to alternative comedy is never easy and only those at the top of their game manage the feat (see Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle or Armando Ianucci’s The Thick of It). It is fantastic therefore to see a caucasian, white, 30-something British comedian command the attention of the audience with nothing other than brilliant writing and fantastic delivery.

Looking at him, one could easily be excused for mistaking him for “any of those comedians you see at Edinburgh”. In fact, if you took the “lad banter” segments of his act and isolated them and ignored the all-important irony belying them, you could quite easily see him as being just that: “like any other comedian”.

However from the very start, Key is out there to subvert your expectations. If Stewart Lee heavily subverts the image of the stand-up comedian, Key subverts the image of the “funny one” in a group of friends. He has everything you’d expect from the “joker” out of your group of mates who cracks wise when you’re all at the pub: all the expressions, the animated delivery and the latent confidence that he has you in the palm of his hand.

And yet…when you listen to what he says or how he says it, you realise that something is a bit different. Something has been altered from the usual array of “lad” banter and witticisms. “They don’t cost anything, do they? Exclamation marks? Certainly no more than a full stop”. Juxtaposing trivial subject matter with an over-or-under-exaggerated intonation is the staple of Key’s act. His delivery is so genuine and natural that you assume it must just be improvisation from a guy who happens to be very talented at talking shit. Not that that’s any sort of criticism because you could quite happily sit and watch him talk about any old rubbish for hours on end, such is his ability at intonating “wrongly” for comedic effect.

However, what’s really impressive about Key and, in my opinion, what separates him from the plethora of mediocre comedians that he resembles, in physical appearance only, is the way in which he is able to incorporate his ramblings into a structured, very cleverly-written 90 minutes of stand-up. The inquiry into the cost of exclamation marks, for instance, seems to start off as a tangential aside but as he goes on, you see how Key has expertly layered his writing so that each development in the story harks back to the exclamation mark and its alarming cheapness. It’s very difficult to achieve both naturalness of a delivery and layered writing and to combine them effectively but Key does so way in a way that seems effortless. “There’s a rumour going round,” says Key, “that I just write down any old shit and say it on stage…I’ll have you know… around 6-8 weeks are spent on each poem” – the self-aware hyperbole is more true than its irony suggests.

Still one might think that, even with someone of Key’s ability, the show might lag over the course of a whole 90 minutes. However, because Key is relying on the strength of his writing and his delivery, as opposed to any specific “bit” of material or gimmick, you are never found wanting or waiting for the next funny bit – if anything there’s too much funny to digest. He breaks up the act into segments involving his notorious poems (the one about Roy is still my personal favourite), various audio-visual segments and lots of interacting with his audience. Yet each segment is permeated with Key’s ability and comes across as a mere extensions of Key’s writing and delivery, rather than as separate, different bits of the act. Who knew anyone could base a comedy act so tightly and effectively around a pack of pornographic playing cards and a bath?

N.B. The above nerdish explanation of Key’s brilliance in this review may inadvertently put off a selection of readers, who aren’t necessarily looking for extremely well-crafted, “clever” comedy and who just want to laugh. To that selection, I would urge you not to fear because, even if you ignore all the intricacies of Key’s act, Masterslut will have no trouble leaving you in stitches. The Mario/Keith Powers poem at the end is the perfect example of a Key bit that is satisfying on both the most sophisticated and basest of comedic levels – Key never appeals to either level without also appealing to the other.

If you missed him at Warwick Arts Centre, make sure you catch him as he tours around the country, right the way through to December. If you’re eager in the meantime, check out excerpts from his act on Youtube, including his absolutely hilarious interview with Simon Amstell.