Boy, did I hate Russell Kane six months ago. I can’t for the life of me now remember how it started. Perhaps it had something to do with me being a snob. Alright. It had lots to do with me being a snob. I’d seen him prancing about at various film premieres and had formed a judgement that he was a preening dick. He also seemed to be on BBC3 whenever I accidentally flicked over, presenting some god awful comedy showcase. I really didn’t like the bugger.
Then I heard him on Just A Minute and the boy done good! He had a brain, he had a moral compass, he had a lot of nous, and, most importantly, Mr Parsons had taken him to his blazered bosom and Mr Parsons can do no wrong in my eyes (well, let’s forget the Wonga voiceovers shall we). So when I got a chance to see his new show – ‘Smallness‘ – I didn’t hesitate. It was beginning to feel like it wasn’t him that was the problem – it was me.
Bounding on stage in sprayed-on raspberry jeans and a low cut silky t-shirt, Kane is a ball of energy, constantly voicing inner dialogues (which can, in the wrong hands, seem a sop to PC-ness, but not here), and even acting out the characteristics of different cheeses (“Oh look, I’m an uptight English Cheddar. Now I’m a flowing Camembert”).
Smallness is a theme used very loosely, giving him free rein to cover such disparate subjects as the uptightness of the English in comparison to other nationalities, his own rise to fame and the wobbles he’s had on the way, and wanting to retain a childlike wonder in his everyday life.
On the way, we hear about his rather distressing encounters with people who recognise him from being on the telly, his own encounters with people more famous than him, and, indeed, why exactly he does all that prancing around at film premieres (that’s where the childlike wonder bit comes in).
He’s engaging, smart, funny, self-deprecating, and as he prowls the stage like a wired spider, going off at tangents, quite often almost muttering under his breath a very funny comment that you have to strain to hear, I sit there wondering quite what I found to dislike in the guy in the first place.
His set, at over an hour and a half is a little too rambling at the end, as he’s far too easily distracted (“Image being me – I get nothing done”), but this feels like a minor quibble when he’s entertained us so royally, whether rabbiting on about the Scouseoporosis that seems to affect people X Factor contestants, how the Savile scandal would make the shortest ever episode of Poirot, or how British people just can’t take Kim Jong-Un at all seriously, and why.
I walked out of the Dome a full-blown Kane convert. Turns out it was me who was the dick all along. Who’d have thunk it?
Russell Kane played the Dome as part of the Brighton Comedy Festival on October 14 2013
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