Phil Ellis has been watching Netflix specials, and has noticed that all the alpha standups now have a hype-man to big them up pre-show. Here, then, is his own version, a shuffling fellow northerner (comic Tom Short) deadpanning a list of Ellis’s non-achievements in a threadbare American accent, punctuated by gunshot SFX and an airhorn. The modest success of a Taskmaster stint has not gone to Ellis’s head: with his new show, he continues to revel in the failures and banalities of his midlife, a 44-year-old man recently moved home with his parents – single, balding, skint.
In Bath Mat, he turns all that into a raucous laughalong, inviting us to pitch abuse at him, straw-polling his observations with the audience, and laughing himself, throughout, to think he gets away with doing this for a living. Over two hours, I found the set more attenuated than the concentrated hits of Ellis I’ve enjoyed on the fringe. It’s a structureless compendium of barely related routines, with more emphasis on so-so standup than the tomfoolish antics that often characterise his work. With sections such as the chat he has with his crowd about roadkill, or another about luxury treatment for pets, we’re in the territory less of precision-focused comedy and more all-in-it-together bants.
Which is fair enough: as fans of his chaotic kids’ show Funz and Gamez know, few do that better than Ellis. And there’s first-base fun to be had here as he flashes amusing snaps from his childhood photo album, shares tales of duff gigs and jokes about how little his parents welcome him back in the family home. A diffuse show comes together most effectively in its titular routine, when Ellis’s canvass-the-crowd approach – in this case, to a question about bath mats – triggers a lively and entertaining response. A later section, patching in background info on his dad and late nan, brings some striking comic scenarios to life.
If few routines here earn the gunshot and airhorn exclamation points that his hype-man continues to apply – well, that’s part of the point with Ellis, who glories in the ramshackle and finds in crapness plenty to celebrate.
• Touring until 15 January
