There have been plenty of double acts in the history of comedy but Jack Whitehall has gone a stage further and formed a triple act. His current tour sees him onstage interviewing his parents Hilary and Michael. It is a frivolous, fun evening, without too much probing. It makes Graham Norton seem like Jeremy Paxman.
The peg for the show, rescheduled from Christmas, is their group effort book How To Survive Family Holidays, so the gently lobbed questions tend to be cues for honed anecdotes or home movie clips on the screen above them. If you want to see a young Jack running around a sun-drenched pool minus his clothes you’ve come to the right place, although a judiciously placed ball protects his dignity.
Whitehall junior and his father co-starred in a run of successful travelogues on Netflix and had a rapport that was both touching and funny. Dad often upstaged his son onscreen and he does the same here, the “lord of darkness” entering through a cloud of dry ice and trotting out stories to embarrass Jack or, towards the end, ranting about Boris Johnson, calling him egomaniacal and adding that “his hair is a disgrace”.
Meanwhile Hilary acts as a kind of voice of reason buffer zone between them, recalling happy jaunts whereas Michael, lounging in his leather armchair, mainly remembers the bad times. Australia, for example, would be a great place if it was not, he says, so full of Australians. This is a man who could cause an international incident in a one-person tent if he would ever lower himself to stay under canvas. If bumptious curmudgeonliness was an Olympic sport he would triumph every time.
It is strange to see Jack Whitehall in a more subdued mode, content to take a back seat after a brief introductory stand-up set to greet the crowd. He appears happy to let his parents grab the limelight and do much of the talking. It is almost as if the 33-year-old has become a child again.
There are tales of Michael turning down Strictly Come Dancing, watching Barry Manilow in Las Vegas and a nice running gag about the veteran agent working at the “coalface”, which seems to translate as finding jobs for Christopher Biggins and then going out for nice long lunches.
The result is a night with plenty of laughs but also a particularly high wince factor. Anyone considering going to their Palladium show on Wednesday should be warned in advance. The picture of a young Michael Whitehall in blue shorts is impossible to unsee.
