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.
His I’m a Celebrity content traces the Tottenham man’s journey to Australia, giddy to be travelling business class, and the difficulties he faced – with one outsized bug, in particular – before recording even began. That cockroach episode is a fine standalone set piece, making our host’s wide-eyed cowardice the joke. Elsewhere, there’s Matt Hancock gossip and an account of that abortive walk-the-plank trial.
All very diverting, perhaps, for reality TV aficionados. Others might wish for more engagement with actual reality. But when it comes, it’s mild. A routine about black people liking chicken and white people liking tea. Bulletins from Aléshé’s new life in Stevenage, with a Jekyll-and-Hyde, English-and-Jamaican wife and disconcertingly posh son. Caricatures of his disciplinarian Nigerian parents. It’s the stuff of a thousand prior standup sets, but Aléshé’s joyous disposition makes you happy enough to revisit it.
You leave in no doubt of the Londoner’s good-vibes performing talent, but wishing he’d take a few bolder steps along the metaphorical plank. You might fall, Babatunde – but you might fly.
• At Reading town hall on 19 May, then touring.
