Stephen Merchant | Brighton Centre | 19 November 2011

A review by Gary Marlowe

Best known as ‘that tall guy who always seems to be around Ricky Gervais’ Stephen Merchant has in recent years elevated himself to the lofty heights of being considered one of the country’s top funny men. There’s no doubting his talent to write great comedy, or indeed to deliver wry voiceovers, but whether his sense of humour stands up in front of a live audience was another question altogether.  In fact, it was something he himself wrestled with for many years. But now the confidence has returned and a huge arena tour confirms quite how popular he has become. So much so that his Brighton show quickly sold out and another was soon added. Now entertaining 5000 people for an hour and a half is a tall order for anyone, let alone someone who hasn’t done stand up for a long, long time. 

So how did he fare?  Well, it was no surprise that the subject of height loomed large straight from the off. Perhaps having spent his entire adult life looking down on people has given him a bit of a complex, especially when it comes to the fairer sex. Indeed this show was entitled Hello Ladies and we quickly learned that it referred to Mr Merchant’s continued struggle to understand women and, so far at least, to find himself a Mrs Merchant.  It became clear that he blamed his lack of success on two things: his visual likeness to the ex-England footballer Peter Crouch and the poor advice he consistently gets from Ricky Gervais. Now if both of those sound just the kind of thing you expected him to say, that really was the problem: it was all a bit too much of what you might have thought and a whole lot less of what you might have hoped for. There was a lot of self-depreciation, some of which was amusing, but there really wasn’t much that endangered splitting anyone’s sides.

Arguably, the funniest moment came at the very beginning when he recounted his first experience of media exposure by showing a photo of himself together with Ricky Gervais where the top of his head was cut off. From then on it was all a bit disjointed and, one has to say, at times somewhat maladroit, especially when he brought two members of the audience on stage to revive a play he wrote at school. If it was funny back then, it certainly wasn’t funny enough to put on again. What worked better, was when there was interaction with the audience, but there wasn’t enough of it. What was also missing were the memorable gags. From the uninspired production, through to the material itself, one got the impression not a huge amount of effort had been put into this show.  No doubt he was busy with other things, but I for one felt a little short-changed. And I didn’t even pay for my ticket!