Laughter-House, November 2008 Review
by John Shaw

Improvisation was taken to a new level with Jan Jack’s Comedy Club at the “Red Lion” in the last show before Christmas.

A normal line-up kicks off with an experienced stand-up, followed by a relative newcomer and ends with the headline act. So what do you do when the opening act does not arrive as expected? Simple. Just improvise.

Fortunately the club’s regular compere , Danny Dawes, has a real gift at working with an audience. He raised the energy level in the room, brought everyone together and had the space and time to extend his banter with the audience.

The relative newcomer, Luke McQueen, opened the show and performed with a slick confidence. The audience were in high spirits by the time the first interval occurred.

Jan Jack has in the past relied on her persona as Nessie Flange, Basingstoke’s most notorious senior citizen, in her act. This time, after the interval, there was more Jan and less Nessie and a lot of new material. The result was impressive – more relaxed, more expansive. I look forward to watching her next year to see if this is the direction she intends to follow.

And so to Adam Bloom, who combines prepared material based on his own life and thoughts on the world with improvisation about the audience.

If stand-up comedy hadn’t existed, Adam Bloom would have had to invent it to find his place in the world. There is a spontaneity and an almost manic intensity about his humour as he explores the oddity and absurdity of his behaviour, and ours.
And having taken us on this breathless, prepared journey, he closed by improvising around the responses of the audience as if to take us into the very act of creating humour. It seems as if he can’t help being one of the funniest people you could wish to meet.

Headlining the January 2009 event is Milton Jones, a friend of Adam, and the complete opposite in style of performance. Bloom has written amusingly of how they once did a double act, where they each took turns telling jokes and each joke had to begin with the subject the last one ended with. “He’s got a million short jokes which makes my jokes seem really long.”

How lucky we are in Basingstoke to be able to watch such different masters at work.

If you missed Adam Bloom, look out for him. And if you haven’t booked to see Milton Jones, what are you waiting for?