Review: Jack Dee gives us Jack Dee humour at Warwick Arts Centre

Bone dry, cynical, fed-up - this comedy gig did what it said on the tin. We asked for Jack Dee, and Jack Dee is what we got.

The comedian of 20-odd years gave an audience an insight into his life - in the bleak style he has become so well-known for- by taking us through a week in his life. He is offended by a jolly electrician who insults his intelligence and emotionally blackmails Jack into supplying him with tea; he fails to provide a lost Japanese family with helpful directions; and he feels doomed to eternal damnation after placing a regular loaf of bread on a shelf in the wheat-free section of the supermarket. Jack’s life, in short, he wants us to know, is nothing special. But ordinary life can be full of hilarious material.

‘Can be’ being the crucial words. While I do laugh at many of his deadpan, straight-faced-as-ever anecdotes - particularly when talking about his moody, hungry, lazy teenage children - I have to admit that I am a little underwhelmed by this continuous stream of ramblings. Jack goes off on the most elaborate tangents that don’t lead anywhere and at the end of the tale of his ‘week’, we are left hanging without anything obvious to laugh at. I cannot help but feel a tad disappointed as his TV and radio comedy has never thus far left me wanting in this way.

But on the whole, an amusing evening full of the synicisms all those in the audience must have been thirsty for,

Sundari Cleal