Stephen Merchant Stand-Up: Hello Ladies, Goodbye Second-Fiddle

Stephen Merchant Stand-Up: Hello Ladies, Goodbye Second-Fiddle

Posted on Tuesday October 18, 2011, 11:41 by Stephen Carty in Empire States

So the other night I went to see Stephen Merchant's stand-up gig Hello Ladies, and it was surprisingly excellent. Now, when I say 'surprisingly', this isn't because I doubt the man's comedic talent - quite the opposite. Even as someone who openly loves Ricky Gervais, I'm always quick to point out that the lesser-known Merchant deserves an equal share of the credit and praise. After all, while the towering collaborator was crucially co-responsible for Gervais' best work, such as The Office, Extras, Cemetery Junction and their Podcasts (seek them out), he was tellingly absent from Gerv's only major misstep, The Invention Of Lying...

No, the reason I was surprised is that, as someone whose iPod contains over ninety of the XFM shows (where Ricky and Steve first met Karl Pilkington) and listens to them most days, I was concerned that a lot of the material might be recycled. I needn't have worried. Despite slyly referencing a recurring skit by introducing himself (they used to use the phrase "Ladies and gentleman, please welcome to the stage" to test out band names) and peppering a few familiar-ish tales (girls arranging to 'meet back at him' at New Year due to his height), Merchant's routine is a welcome new addition to the talented writer's CV. Intelligently-written and confidently performed, the Peter Crouch-ian funnyman shone in a way even critical XFM listener Dicky Anderson couldn't have complained about.

While covering well-worn topics like his height and lack of success with the ladies might seem like re-treading old steps, Merchant actually mined fresh angles and insight from these two obviously-personal themes. Instead of harping on like a bitter singleton though, the endearing Bristol native used these as twin pillars to build his show around, veering off to provide brilliantly-deconstructed observations on dating life and getting laid. Despite demonstrating a natural ability for physical comedy, Merchant's strength remains pinpointing the unspoken absurdities in everyday life and social habits (including the dangers of VHS porn and how text abbreviations such as 'Soz' aren't always appropriate). Admittedly, there are a few crude gags and lowbrow-pleasing subjects, yet pleasingly they're all skewered through his perceptively self-aware filter.

And, whilst a lesser, lazier man might've relied on easy built-in cheers by intermittently name-dropping Ricky or Karl into conversation, Merchant impressively proved above such comfort blankets. Indeed, aside from humorously admitting that his reason for going solo was to avoid sharing profits with "you know who" (nicely done Steve), there was no mention of either the Brentmeister General or everyone's favourite idiot abroad. Naturally, from years working together there were inescapable shades of Gervaisian style (such as the fake-arrogance or pretending to hear boast-inviting questions from the crowd), but only a real cold-hearted cynic would begrudge this. Thinking about it, who's to say Merchant wasn't responsible for this shtick anyway?

Plus, while Ricky expertly trades the delicate balance between mock-bragging (well, semi-mock) and honest self-criticism, Merchant corners the market in mocking himself. Displaying a photograph from The Guardian shortly after his Golden Globe success for The Office in 2004, it's somehow more endearing since this half of the like-minded collaborating duo has unfairly languished in the shadows for too long. Charming, likeable and simply too honest to ever be widely accepted by today's fake-filled society, there's a satisfying sense that the speccy comic (once likened to Beaker from The Muppets) deserves this individual triumph and moment in the spotlight.

So why is he turning to stand-up now? Well, Merchant first performed in Bristol back in 1997 (in what he describes as "a room above a pub"), where it went well before the same act fell flat merely a month later. Performing infrequently over the years, he also wound up as a finalist for the 1998 Daily Telegraph Open Mic Awards and teamed up with Gervais, Jimmy Carr and Robin Ince during the 2001 Edinburgh Festival. Having recently started up again in little clubs around London, he describes the reactions to his stand-up experiences in years past as "raising the roof off one evening, only for the next show to fizzle out like a damp firework." Happily, this time was the former.

Perhaps you could argue that there wasn't one stand-out moment of genius that instantly secured itself to memory, but the show was consistently laugh-out-loud funny (or, to abbreviate, 'LOL') and not once did he come close to losing the crowd. Adept at introducing a point early on and then seamlessly re-introducing it back later (such as Venn diagrams the necessity of stooping), there's little doubt that the whole shebang has been honed over years of experience, with the final product gamely offering up nostalgic failures from his past for our amusement.

Finishing strong, the encore skit (which included two members of the audience to perform a school play Merchant co-wrote back then) was a surprising change-of-pace which worked, while the camera-projected, enter-the-bedroom sex face was ego-less comedy at its most effective. Surely, even Dicky Anderson would approve.