I like Gordon Southern. He has three of the most important traits that I believe a comedian should have: he is charming, energetic and genuine. Having enjoyed watching him on stage as part of a line up or solo, I have come to expect that I’ll always be left smiling afterwards. 

I am excited to be in the crowd for his opening night show. And so is he. Effervescent as he leaps on to the stage, Gordon beams a broad open smile and without skipping a beat is off on a meet and greet of the room. He gets the giggles quickly adorning the crowd with alternate realities. His banter is openly manic, his face in a permanent happy crinkle.

Here’s a good natured fella from Brixton in “Sarf* London,” and he’d rather like a chat with us. And this is The Kerfuffle.

The show is essentially about life. Trawling himself, his family, his community and then his place in the world, we get glimpses of golden humour. This is stuff we can all relate to, we are all human! And there is certainly a lot going on. I can’t help wondering if the show is too full of material and ideas; too many things to be able to go into any one thing with the weight it needs to have full effect on us.

The pace he gallops through the show is hard to keep up with in parts. His beautiful stories about his dad are so delicate and human (my favourite kind of humour) I would have liked more time to linger over them.

I was pleased to see he had bought along his sound effects machine which I really enjoyed in his 2012 festival show A Brief History of History. He uses it to punctuate the relevance of certain statements (I have to say my favourite is, “That…Might…Not be a fact!”) and no-one in the crowd is disappointed when he turns up the beats for some of his trademark rapping.  

Altogether a swift hour of honest humour which is executed exactly as it is described it in the programme; a joyfully silly and quick-witted shambles. And yes, I left smiling. 
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*South 

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Gordon Southern likes New Zealand and is happy to keep coming back, which is something we should be very happy about. He bounds onto the stage exuding confidence and smugness (something to which he happily admits during the show) and rattles out an hour of constant hilarity in his relatively new show, The Kerfuffle.

He is very quick and clever, partly due to this show being tried and true. Starting off by assigning strange occupations to various audience members (declaring we have “celebrities in the room”), he continues by giving us a mixture of both jokes and information, with a constant reminder of his catch phrase; “That’s a fun fact!” Although this is nothing new to those who have seen Gordon perform before, it is entertaining and good to know which jokes have a factual basis.

It’s obvious by the response his jokes garner from the audience that he’s a popular and truly gifted comic, with no joke going flat and himself even needing to have a giggle at some of his off-the-cuff jokes. A lot of the humour arises from the openness and participation of the audience – nothing embarrassing or difficult, but the raucous laughter and friendly conversation he has with various people is thoroughly entertaining.

Over the course of the hour, we hear about performances for the army and a member of the Royal Family, get an hilarious example of Bollywood dancing, hear personal tales of his family, and learn the problems with buying discounted, bargain products and mobile phones.

His father, who was not expected to live through December, plays a large part in the show and there are many funny anecdotes surrounding his actions. It is surprisingly touching to hear these tales.

Gordon Southern’s performance has little structure to it and he’s honest about this as he randomly segues between topics, however there are recurring themes which help bring the show to a resounding finish.  

Overall, the show is memorable for being funny for almost the entire hour. That being said, Gordon Southern’s The Kerfuffle is worth the watch if you want an hour’s worth of reasonably clean, clever and thoroughly entertaining stand-up. Recommended.

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