The Best of the Fest – every Thursday night at The San Francisco Bathhouse – is a lucky dip, pick ’n’ mix selection of acts currently showing in the comedy festival.

We are not told expressly who has chosen these comedians to be ‘the best’, but the evening functions largely as a pleasant 90 minutes of advertising as most give us titbits from their respective solo shows in the hope that we’ll be tempted to come along for the full serving.

 

MC Steve Wrigley opens strongly and soon has the audience warmed up and laughing loudly. Throughout the course of the evening he becomes increasingly less effective as he falls prey to ever more frequent banter with one small corner of drunken hecklers. I would have loved to scream, “Ignore the hecklers!” –but it seems desperately oxymoronic.

 

The first act to appear is the laconic Wilson Dixon. His laid-back cowboy persona has an understated tone and a gentle pace that is rare in the field of stand up. His song, ‘Life is Like…’ is a real crowd pleaser and, in one of the most excellent features of Best of the Fest, he leaves the stage while we still want more.

 

Next up we have Steve Wrigley’s “good mate” Jamie Bowen. Bowen lowers the standard significantly with a series of racist, sexist and otherwise bigoted jokes. The ukulele utilised in Bowen’s solo show is nowhere to be seen and he consistently impersonates the faces of people who dislike his show. The Kiwi woman gets a rough treatment over the course of the evening, beginning here, which is somewhat unpalatable given the absence of any females in the evening’s line up.

 

Britain’s Miles Jupp rounds up the first half with a routine based on his posh yet affable self-deprecation. His largely class-based humour is refreshingly intelligent and takes us back out of the gutter – though doesn’t really place us anywhere else.

 

Opening the second half, Simon McKinney’s material is not from his solo show, “I’m doing a show down the road about a fish, but that’s another story.” He revisits some of last year’s material (irritating when you only see a guy once a year) but much is new and all is a favourite with the crowd – I can feel the woman behind me laugh on the back of my neck.

 

Javier Jarquin, recommended to us with schoolboy excitement by Wrigley, rounds off our evening. Jarquin is confident and charming, blessedly tells the hecklers to shut up and refrains from giving the true highlights of his show – an impressive array of card ninja tricks – while showing enough to raise wild applause. 

 
The Best of the Fest is a weekly guess, but it is always a bargain for your money and a good night out.   
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