This show has many elements I’ve been looking for in stand up for a while: intelligence, honesty, cohesiveness, structure, set up and payoff; still managing to appear unscripted and spontaneous and as if the storyteller is not running off an unalterable set list they memorised months prior; jokes about racism without being racist jokes; white male comedy that is doing a fair job of being something slightly different. 

A friend asked before the show, “Is it just going to be one of those white male dick comedians?”
“Actually,” I said, “he’s trying his best not to be.” 

Foxglove is a really nice venue. 

A charming recorded message from Nightingale’s niece or nephew opens the show and instantly offsets any dickish jokes that might come by establishing him as a genuine nice guy who likes kids and is also a loveable uncle. Nightingale says he came up with the title because swear words are attention-grabbing and he wanted a title with a swear in it. It takes me a fair bit of time to figure out which word Nightingale is referring to. Thinks ‘dick’ is a swear word? That’s the sort of genuine nice guy he is.

Being able to tell us about his show in Auckland the other night, being able to make audience-specific jokes without harassing the audience or using clichéd lines that would work in any location, all gives a sense of authenticity and creates the illusion that the entire show has been scripted (or not scripted at all) just for us.

There is some good tie-in with last year’s show, which I did not see, (“Last year I told you all that… well, since then, this has happened…”), that also made me feel like we were all catching up with an old friend, even though I’ve never seen him before.

He mentions that he has ADHD. I can’t tell if that is a joke or not, but if it isn’t, it seems like this might be a favourable trait for a comedian to have and it might well work in his advantage. 

He’s billed as a Lancastrian socialite. Perhaps turns of speech such as “I’ll tell you for why” are Lancastrian, perhaps they’re simply speech errors, but from a New Zealand point of view, I think he’s worth seeing just for amusing quirks like that. And his socialising seems to have paid off as, after a good deal of setup and harping on about being single, he tells us all about a girl he went on two dates with before going on tour. That may be a spoiler but I think it best to inform any women planning on seeing the show now, before they get too much of a crush on him. 

Of course he does know how to swear in New Zealand English too, perhaps a little more than I’m comfortable with, and yes, there are a few crasser jokes, particularly a detailed anecdote that I really, really don’t want to be visualising, but his charming affability lets him get away with it. He isn’t being mean. He isn’t being offensive. Of course, it could be just my pink guilt talking, but I think he’s really not being a dick.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer