Comedy review: Sean Lock, Gary Little and Geoff Norcott, The Glee, Glasgow

Sean Lock PIC: Richard Gardner/REX/Shutterstock

For its opening night, Scotland’s largest comedy club booked an impressive line-up, with three bona fide headliners: Gary Little, Geoff Norcott and Sean Lock, in an unusually intimate setting for the 8 Out of 10 Cats team captain. Yet at close to 400-seat capacity, this wasn’t a small gig for compere Jay Lafferty. Nevertheless she played it expertly. The Greenock native was cheekily scurrilous but warm and welcoming, establishing fruitful conversations in pockets throughout the front rows, creating an expectant atmosphere for the other acts.

Sean Lock, Gary Little and Geoff Norcott, The Glee, Glasgow ****

Like Lafferty, Little had a self-deprecatory swipe at Glaswegian life expectancy. And he elicited consistent laughs from alternately pitying and fearing the sort of woman that might want to date him at the grand old age of 55. His venerability and class awkwardness played into an extended routine about a frying pan purchase, brilliantly sending up the supposed life-changing qualities anyone can attribute to a new household item in a wobble of mental weakness.

Also raising a sarcastic eyebrow at faddishness was Norcott, gently teasing at the edges of social change, slyly provocative in his pokes at developments in politics, feminism and millennial snowflakery. Painting himself as the voice of common sense, he’s waggish rather than aggressive, his protesting incredulity underpinned by a lively wit.

By contrast, Lock subverts the idea of an Everyman. Having set himself up as the beacon of sanity on a train, the only passenger not glued to his phone, he then shares all manner of whimsical eccentricity, indulging his imagination with some hilarious imagery of freed testicles and drop-kicked penguins. Related matter-of-factly, it’s a pleasure to imbibe his capricious logic. - Jay Richardson