‘Why weren’t you like this through there?!” We’re in the foyer of the Stand Comedy Club in Glasgow, to which the denouement of Nick Helm’s touring show has been unavoidably displaced. After a long break and an auditorium emptied for a medical emergency, the comic is performing to the handful of punters prepared to wait until well after 11 o’clock for the show’s closing moments. Helm perches on the bar. His diehards semi-circle around him. No other crowd on his tour will get this intimate an experience – and the laughs (more so than they were in the main theatre) are accordingly uproarious.
No doubt Helm would prefer his show to have proceeded without an ambulance call for a sick audience member. But it allows him to build a rapport, and deliver a memorable experience, that otherwise hadn’t looked likely. The show’s first three-quarters find the 45-year-old grumping at his audience as usual, recalling being bullied in childhood and touching on the struggles with depression he has chronicled in earlier shows. He relates too his search for a house and his career drift since his sitcom Uncle ended in 2017.
