Melbourne Comedy Festival Roadshow - Canberra

Last night The Hun, his parents and I attended the Melbourne Comedy Festival Roadshow - we'd never been before, and I think The Hun's mother only heard about it by chance. They don't tell you who the comedians are going to be, which is a bit odd. On the one hand, it's a good way of not having any preconceptions of what you are going to see, or decide that you don't want to go because you don't know who you are, but it just seems odd to me (and has made it hard to try to remember/find out who we actually saw!).

The host for the night was really funny - I can't recall his name (Dave Williams? Maybe?) and I can't find it online! He turned 22 on the night of the show (so, born 14/06/1986), but I doubt that would help me find out where I can see him again. He told The Huns favourite joke of the night, retelling the story of his decision to scare his 4 year old sister when he was younger. A fantastic MC and not a bad looker to boot!

The first act for the night was (again, I think) Harley Breen. He was good with his 'visitor to Canberra' stories and gave a pretty accurate retelling of what some of our bus drivers are like. He told a few bogan jokes and a few Queannbeyan jokes (he has family there) and he was quite the cack.

The second act for the night was Hannah Gadsby - I have no trouble remembering her name, as my favourite joke of the night was one of hers, a story of how all the members of her family have palindronic names. If I start calling you 'Poohoop', then you can totally just blame her. She told stories of her time in Tasmania hanging out with the elderly neighbours, and a lot about her experience of coming out and pointing to her pubes. I thought she was fantastic (although I thought she was seriously tanking at the start - seems it's just part of the persona).

After the intermission, the third act came on - Mickey D. He was also pretty funny, but a lot of his humour was self-depreciating in a bit of a sad way. He talked about depression, talked about drinking, talked about accidentally making fun of war veterans, the blind and parasailing wheelchaired people. But again, he was pretty funny!

When the MC came on and announced the third act would be a musical trio, I sat forward in my seat. Could it be Tripod?! That would be the best show ever! Unfortunately not, but they were still their own kind of celebrity - GUD! Paul McDermott is all kinds of cute and dynamic, but I've stopped watching him on TV - I'd found it was almost like all his success with the original GNW had gone to his head, and he was always trying to recapture it. I don't know what it is, but he was just unwatchable for me. But. Live? Super-duper! He is so energetic and knows how to work the stage and the crowd and his group and his voice and his moves. The keyboardist was also pretty good, though there was a part where he was wondering around and stretching and we're just not sure if he was stoned or was actually trying to conceal laughter as we saw later. An interesting highlight was when they asked the crowd if there were any vegans there - so of course I had to give a little 'wooh!' for vegan pride, along with a few others in the audience. After voicing their disbelief that 'we' even had the energy to do that, they wanted us to settle something for them that they'd been arguing over dinner. It was at this point I shrunk back in my seat, I KNEW it wasn't going to be totally PG (luckilly we were in like row 'P' so there was no issue): "Can vegans swallow cum? Because, technically it's an animal product...". How delightful, sitting there with The Huns parents for that! I should also point out they were very good with the comebacks after a heckler called out some nonsense - he's very quick off the mark.

Overall, it was a surprisingly entertaining night! We weren't expecting a whole lot and were feeling a bit frazzled on the way there because we'd rushed to get dinner, but I laughed the whole time and I would definitely go again next year.