Babatunde Aléshé flunked his first trial on last year’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here, refusing to walk the plank from atop a 32-storey building. Go figure: nothing about his debut touring show, Babahood, suggests a risk-taker. The set majors in his newfound celebrity, with stories about his double act with Mo Gilligan and a long section on his jungle exile for Channel 4. It’s expertly done: Aléshé is a gregarious host and lively raconteur. But it’s cosy rather than adventurous, altogether more Gogglebox sofa than bushtucker trial.
Probably, we should indulge him: having worked the standup circuit since he was a teenager, the 37-year-old has every right to bask in his success. We get a snapshot of his previous life tonight, with a joke about the worst gig he ever performed, to an audience of taciturn south London gangsters. That riff, with its amusing act-out of hard men laughing, and a follow-up routine about Aléshé’s old job at Transport for London, are among the highlights, with an edge lacking from the later gilded stories of success.
