Another full house for Corn Hall Comedy

Posted on 17th November 2024

It was another full house for the reinvigorated Comedy night at the Corn Hall, with Steve Bugeja warming up the crowd nicely, exchanging the sort of good natured banter with the front row that we’ve come to expect from our compere for the evening. His love of Japanese toilets and his status as a single man – topics quite possibly connected – set the crowd up nicely for Jessica Fostekew.

Having just turned forty, Jessica was preoccupied with aging, a worry she rightly determined won little sympathy given the mature demographic of the Corn Hall audience. But it did win her laughs, as did her antipathy towards her son’s rap music, and travelling at anything above a walking pace. Jack Hester could never be accused of adopting a walking pace, as he charged through a routine that leaned very much on the idea of an Irishman abroad, be that here or in Mexico, where the population reportedly trumps his fellow countrymen when it comes to fervent Catholicism. We also got to hear about water pistol baptism, digging up the dead and sticking cameras where they had no business going.

Tom Rosenthal deftly avoided the elephant not in the room – the evening’s headliner until the eleventh hour had been Suzi Ruffell – by going full steam ahead with a routine that revolved around his recent autism diagnosis. Imagine the diffidence of Simon Bird blended with the garrulousness of Mark Watson, and you’ll have fair idea of an evening in the company of Rosenthal, who quickly won over anyone who thought they had come to see someone else. He’s a man that finds small talk impossible, loves the dangers of gambling and, uncannily, was able to communicate telepathically with his audience while impersonating an anti-Semitic gargoyle. As is so often the case, you really had to be there.