Comedy news: Tom Webb's Comedy Cabin

Tweet

Most people haven’t picked up a HB pencil in anger since their GCSE Art class, yet there are about 20 twenty-somethings doing just that in a small, dimly lit basement at Sosho cocktail bar in east London.

They’re all playing MegaGames, a weekly audience contest at Tom Webb’s Comedy Cabin. In fact, they’re drawing him, with the best facing off against the winner of a round of Human Battleships in order to win ‘a T-shirt worth £17,000’ (or a £50 bar tab and entry into every Comedy Cabin until Webb is 92).

It’s a novel concept – who wouldn’t want to be open an envelope, scream ‘bang!’ and drop dead in a theatrical manner pretending to be a sunken ship?

Sadly, tonight there just aren’t enough people here. The turnout is disappointingly small, especially as the wonderful Josie Long has popped in to headline, looking like the South East London version of Little Red Riding Hood in her, erm, red hooded jacket.

To be honest, Long isn’t at her best, although she’s still a comfortable cut above most stand-up you’ll see for a fiver on a Thursday night. Her set's a bit ragged, pre-empted by disclosing she’s had a “shit day” - always a bad sign. However, her standard material is great, and, in some cases, sickly informative – did you know livening up your festive family dinner is as easy as switching the punchlines of Christmas crackers and asking your Gran to read the first? Dementia setting in, Nan?

Long has definitely been better than this, but she’s still a gobby gem of British comedy.

The excellent laughs-for-pounds ratio is also upped due to the sets of London Fringe Best Newcomer award-winner Jo Selby and the brilliant Norwegian comic Daniel Simonsen.

Selby, aka Tatiana Ostrakova (‘winner’ of an Anglo-Russian comedy exchange award, apparently), is a highlight. There’s no real scripted brilliance to her set, but it’s a highly polished act and well worth its award-winning credentials, honed Moscovite accent and perma-grin staying fixed at all times.

Simonsen isn’t billed to perform, but turns up to replace the Amused Moose award-winner Nas Osmanoglu, who’s been whisked off at the last minute. Luckily, the Norwegian (who looks far more Gallic than Scandinavian) is a more than able replacement, although some of the small audience find his awkward rambling style off-putting; Simonsen genuinely has a condition called social phobia.

Along the way, there’ve been glimpses of British comedy future (if we’re saying Long is British comedy present), by way of a short James Brown-lead skit from a strange dancing female mute whose name I don't catch; and Tom Craine, a self-styled ‘Hip-Hop mathematician’ (“I’m on point… decimal point”), whose name is an aptronym for his six-foot-seven frame.

Paul Sweeney, a guitar-wielding Dave Grohl lookalike, circa 1970 completes the up-and-coming element, but unlike Craine, doesn’t look like he’s got the material in him to break the big time.

The night culminates in a MegaGames Weakest Link final. At this point, we need a disclaimer: I’m one of the finalists. My drawing was awesome, or the best of a terrible bunch. Now I badly want that cash/bar tab.

Unfortunately, it might be the tension, it might be the fact I’m not quite sure what I’m doing, but I lose in mere seconds. Bye-bye fifty quid’s worth of overpriced Dark and Stormy’s and ‘seventeen grand’ t-shirt. It wouldn't have fit anyway.

Jesse Whittock