No towering performance (Peter Kay - Live at the top of the Tower)

Member Name: buttonman

Product:	Peter Kay - Live at the top of the Tower
Date:	12/02/01 (1414 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Few good gags

Disadvantages: Too personal and longwinded

Shakespeare walks into a pub,the barman says "you're bard".

If you like this feeble pun this may be the video for you.I like Peter Kay whose show 'Phoenix Nights' is presently running on Channel 4.This programme is character based and this format may suit Peter better than stand up comedy.Kay is from Bolton and his humour comes from peoples' foibles and nostalgic remenisences of Spangles and Stretch Armstrongs.You'll get no politics or blue stuff here and this was borne out by the audience which was full of old biddies including his mother.

The video is a flabby seventy minutes and I think given the material he could have finished in half the time.It was filmed at the circus arena at the top of Blackpool tower and the production values were poor.That said at least a small effort was made with backstage snippets with Kay talking to his co-writer who appears as Gerry StClair in 'Phoenix Nights'.These clips were rushed and offered few laughs.The video does start out black and white and stays that way until Kay finds the £40 needed to upgrade to colour,mostly by raiding the till of his own merchandice stall.Peter Kay toaster anyone?.

The show proper starts slowly with Peter explaining that they're filming a video to the partizan audience,why this crept into the video itself I don't know.A few funny one liners follow -"I've got a steering wheel down my pants,it's driving me nuts!".These were followed with dull reminises such as "who remembers school dinners?" and then onto funny observations such as the booking of holidays on Teletext "It's on page 67 of 89 - "where's 'hold'!".This snigger worthy segment was done to death with the punchline "Seen it,booked it,F***** off"! repeated throughout the remainder of the show.

As noted his mother was in the audience and this lead to a lot of tiresome in-jokes and embarrassing memor
ies.This would be fine for a home movie but not so good for the paying public.The audience were easier pleased and howled along to any lame gag,still it was in Blackpool,so they were probably drunk!.

On the whole the video was disappointing.I've got live tapes from such stars as Dee,Skinner,Monkhouse and Coogan and the seal of quality is wether you watch them more than once.At the end Peter warns "Don't copy this and sell it at car boot",well I won't copy it but I've an original copy going cheap!

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