Micky Flanagan was worried, he says, that audiences might have moved on. Fair enough: it has been half a decade since he last graced the nation’s stages, when the man who defined the difference between going “out” and “out out” was arguably the UK’s most popular comedian. But time waits for no standup, least of all when the intervening period has seen him hit 60, and seen the context change in which old-school, cheeky chappy comedy might be delivered.
And yet, his worries are without substance, if the opening night of his Hammersmith run was any gauge. These were the last warm-up gigs before Flanagan’s tour proper starts next week, and they found the east Londoner in evergreen form, and rapturously received by a crowd that still adores him. Watching it, one could believe the market may even be growing for Flanagan’s brand of comedy, which looks at poncy modernity with the sceptical eye of one who grew up poor and without sentimentality in the middle of the previous century. These are confusing times, and there’s something reassuring about the solid certainties from a simpler age that Flanagan brings – or at least there is when delivered with Flanagan’s fundamental unseriousness and sense of fun.
