Al Pitcher World Picture Show George Hotel, South Molton Review: Rosanna Rothery

KIWI Al Pitcher's concept for a show is a good one. He takes pictures of the places he visits and brings out the comedy behind the seemingly familiar. Hours before this gig he'd found plenty of oddities to snap in South Molton. The audience loved these. There were funny ones taken up North, too, but things are always strange up North aren't they? And as for the quirky pictures taken abroad? Well that's foreigners for you.

As Al found out, what people in South Molton like to do best is laugh at themselves. That's if all the details have been divulged. They won't let rip if they don't know all the details — the precise details!

Before embarking on his slide show, Al warned us audience participation was pretty much essential: "Otherwise it would just be an overweight Kiwi showing you his holiday snaps."

Did he regret saying that? I fear he might have. It's not that we didn't enjoy his local pictures, we did. The one of the gate, in front of the bins, which had been locked for "safety reasons" was especially good.

"Yes, yes very funny but where was it taken?" the audience wanted to know. "At the school? Near the police station? What was the name of the road it was taken on?"

Al looked exasperated. "I don't know, it's your town!" he exclaimed as he threatened to march us up there and show us the exact spot so that we could come back and continue the joke.

Such was the tone of this brilliantly chaotic, but simply hilarious gig. All credit to Al for playing up to this somewhat undisciplined audience and taking them and the gig right up to the brink of anarchy. It was brave stuff and he revelled in it.

The mic kept slipping, the projector was too dark, people didn't laugh at what he expected while the hecklers were intent on giving him meticulous directions to North Molton. That he appeared to be losing control added immensely to our merriment.

"Oh no," he cried in utter despair. "The Journal is in tonight and I'm only going to get three out of five pasties!"

Something about Al's demeanour made me think that, as audiences go, we weren't exactly a predictable bunch. Having just bemoaned the fact that Tiverton was the nearest railway station, he looked dumbfounded as a discussion ensued about whether in fact Barnstaple or Umberleigh station was nearer.

In this town, he discovered, the audience prefer to get a group consensus before feeding back their heckle to the comedian.

By the end of the gig, he confessed, he was feeling duty bound to phone Jo Caulfied, who is playing the venue on November 5, warning her that we were, "lovely but insane".

Well we'll settle for that! There's many a comedian can fill the 3,500-seater Apollo but they've not had their metal tested until they've done a South Molton gig.

In fact the George Hotel wins over the Apollo on several fronts. It's relaxed, it's cheaper, you can get a great value meal before the show if you wish and then you can watch as the comedian sinks or swims in the exposure of an intimate setting.

As for you Al, turning up in any town, camera in hand, hoping to illustrate the foibles of the locals is a brave thing to do. Luckily, in this part of the world, we love laughing at our own eccentricity so fear not: it's resounding five out of five pasties. In fact, as I haven't laughed so much in a long time, we'll chuck in the cream tea bonus too.