Simon Kay is the self-proclaimed sad boy, but funny guy, on at the Cavern Club. He’s a bit of both as it turns out, but decidedly more funny than sad.

His material is wide ranging, so we’re short on detail. At times, I could do with more. We travel from an opening joke about a theatre nurse in an emergency situation, where the emphasis is on theatre, to the dietary no-nos of Hare Krishna, to climate change – all of this in the first five minutes. Climate change, though, provides his best joke of the evening: about what airlines could do to slap more money on the price of a ticket. 

Kay hails from Auckland where the housing situation is even worse than in Wellington. His performance warms up considerably here with a suggestion about ramraiding a certain real estate company that’s wryly welcomed. Interaction with the audience also gets under way with its usual unpredictable responses. From audience ask-fors, Kay does well with incorporating the offers of Beowolf as a baby name, crochet as a favourite pastime and an icicle as a favoured murder weapon into an improvised story.

Fifty minutes is a lot to fill, and I get the impression Kay feels the same way. Perhaps the biggest challenge of the stand-up comic is maintaining momentum with both material and delivery. I sense we’re halfway through, but I don’t want to hear the performer also sensing it.

Relating longer stories might be an idea – by way of prolonging interest in a topic, wondering where the story is leading, and making us wait for a punchline. Though we do get a couple of those. It turns out Kay is a vegan, and quaffs a tin of chickpeas to prove it, while sticking up for minorities.

And his final story keeps our curiosity and laughter on board till the last.

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