Comedy review: Lee Mack

WITH relatively little fanfare, Lee Mack has risen to become one of the UK’s most popular comics. Currently his sitcom Not Going Out – the BBC’s longest-running – and panel show Would I Lie To You? enjoying audience and critical acclaim.

Lee Mack has become one of this centurys most popular comedian. Picture: Getty

Lee Mack: Hit The Road Mack

King’s Theatre, Glasgow

***

His live act hasn’t changed drastically in that time, and he combines a Mr Primetime slickness with a straightforward desire to entertain that betrays his origins as a Pontins Bluecoat.

The quality of the material isn’t end of the pier, but there’s a certain throwback nostalgia for jokes, proper jokes, occasionally about ‘er indoors and a bit of blue.

What elevates his act is a delivery that’s irresistible, the sheer number of gags packed in evidence of a committed work ethic, but at the same time executed with classic showmanship, punchlines maximised with theatrical glances and appeals to the crowd.

Pacing the stage like a metronome, Mack spins on his heels to cast his lines out, like an angler.

Capably, he embraces the consistency of the old-school joke-tellers while subverting and playfully exaggerating their hoarier attitudes and sexist overtones, opening with a knock-knock... joke of all things, and evoking Operation Yewtree as a peril of all BBC employees like himself.

An encore question and answer session unnecessarily pads an 80-minute show, and he had to scramble quickly on Wednesday night when a hilarious, deadpan response threatened to steal his thunder.

His crowd work is otherwise attentive and sparky though, his magic trick flirtations with a woman in the front row encapsulating his cheekily risqué appeal.

Seen on 29.10.14