You may have noticed I delegated most of the Wellington stand-up shows to Thomas this year. Something made me admit it was not my favourite genre, so I picked the more theatrical shows, including improv. But with stand-up being the staple, I’ve had to cover a bit of that too.

It’s while watching Steve Wrigley – whose skill as an improviser is almost unsurpassed in my experience – that I realise why I’ve avoided stand-up. It has too much in common with the strategies of playground bullies. It finds people to pick on, either out in the wider world or right here in the room, and aims to make the rest of us feel good for joining the gang that’s against them. 

Oh it’s not as blunt as a skinhead thug with hate-tattooed knuckles. It’s more subtle than the standover tactics of a protection racket. But the principles are similar: join me against them and we’ll all feel better. Even the victim can join the club by going along with the game. I never liked it at school (even though I had good strategies for keeping out of the way of bullies) and I don’t like it now.

To be specific … Wrigley’s set starts very well. The formulaic stuff about PC friends, Goths, Emos and asking people in the audience what they do for a living soon rises to another level when he burst into an improvised song about the people we’ve just met. Of course he does it in an American accent but hey, it’s a corny song so why not? I suppose.

It’s his next interactions with audience members that start to rely more heavily on the put-down – little spazzy send-up gestures, that sort of thing. Then he tells a midget joke – and doesn’t seem to notice his once-receptive audience has gone quiet. His have-a-go-at-Christianity stuff (where God has a John Wayne accent) is not so much offensive as poorly pitched at the audience who probably know too little about it to get his point, care too little to be shocked or have confronted those questions and come to better conclusions a long time ago. Whatever, it doesn’t fire.

His ‘act three’ material is better – more whimsical and skilled in the delivery (he’s a master on mic technique) – but his audience remains less responsive than they might have been. And I’m thinking good, we Kiwis have taste and standards and if he found traction with that style in New York and Canada – got infected by the nasty bug, maybe? – I’m glad he’s finding it’s not so popular here.

So here I am with this flash theory about what’s wrong with stand-up per se and on comes Simon McKinney to totally blow it out of my wine glass. From the moment he tells us to take care of the candles (on our tables), which reminds him of the time a well coiffed customer combusted as she threw her head back in laughter, we’re hooked.

This ebullient man of many voices, and the uncanny ability to make everything sound as if he’s only just thought of it, is genuinely funny. Sure he’s playing with cultural stereotypes but not in a put-down way. He’s delighted to be observing and experiencing how people are around the world. And he’s well tuned into his audience, sensing when things are slipping and able to turn it into a plus.

Okay, maybe he is having a bit of a go at Arnie and Sly but hey, they’re mega stars, they’re paid to be mocked. And when he muses on the Jesus thing, it’s delightful. So is his Star Wars sequence. And it’s not just voices he does. His physical humour comes to the fore with a walking drunk routine.

One key to what makes his routine (if that’s the word) work is that his skills get used for something way beyond showing off. It’s not demanding humour but it’s very infectious.

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