I first saw Peter Kay on Jonathan Ross. One bit that amused me was that he was in the same green room as a pretentious pop-star who had brought ‘imaginary’ Japanese people with her who just posed. Peter Kay pulled some great ‘they’re nuts!’ faces and his rapid wit contrasted delightfully with their posturing silence.
This DVD was an opportunity to see the effect he had on a live audience. Despite the introduction and ending in which he did a rather unnecessary, I thought, sketch involving a taxi-driver, the actual performance itself was electrifying.
Kay’s humour is based on observation of working class family behaviour with much of his material being derived from the foibles of his own mother and grandmother who – in this DVD – are in the audience, and whose faces reveal the accuracy of his send up. The camera flicks onto his Granny and we just know that she really has called a CD player a VD player.
Although Peter Kay delivers the odd joke, this is quite rare, and his main thrust comes in how he makes fun of people getting drunk and dancing at weddings. His little podgy body and huge smile combine irresistibly to comic
effect when he demonstrates how some people walk onto the dance floor beginning the dance as they approach, and how some try to resist dancing at all only to burst into a John Travolta at the last moment.
His Uncle Nobby (who evolves quickly into Uncle Nobhead) singes people with his roll-up whilst ingratiatingly and obsequiously being over-friendly. His wife, it seems, has a beehive and a face like a smacked bum.
Some of the language gets a bit blue but unlike some comedians who make this a central feature of their performance, Peter Kay’s ‘Fs’ and ‘Bs’ are throw away parts of his monologue, infrequent, and almost un-noticed. They are there though so if you’re a fundamentalist Christian with children, beware.
Judging by the audience reaction, I’d say that his humour tickled the funny bone of many young people who didn’t seem so much offended as ecstatic at his jokes. The surprising thing about that for me was that a lot of his material involved ‘Bullseye’ – an old television programme. His Jim Bowen impressions were spot on and his pastiche of a whole show was irreverent and killingly accurate, but would surely appeal more to the older audience of TV viewers who would have seen the original. It didn’t stop the young people laughing so I guess that wasn’t a vital consideration.
When I was fifteen I remember seeing a young Mike Harding in a Birmingham pub. In the loo a couple of Irishmen were talking.
One said, ‘Sure, an’ he’d be a great bloke to have at a party!’
And the other replied, ‘He would, Patrick. And yet I can’t remember one ******* word he’s said all night!’
This ability to just be the leader, to be genuinely funny, also belongs to Peter Kay. His anecdotes are good but his physical presence and enthusiasm create a mood and it’s the best one you’ve been in for ages. The whole audience warm to him as a whole bubbly package and enjoy not only his outrageous send-ups of people who remind them of their own fathers and Grannies, but also the happy vibe, the schoolboy simplicity of the performance, the twinkly-eyed joy of it all. Do they remember the show like they’d learnt the script after it has ended? Doubtful. But they were in the zone that he created on the night as he wove so persuasive a spell of jollity.
I think there can be few to fill his shoes. And yet it is not only the considerable charm and charisma of Peter Kay that guarantees success and produces such a good atmosphere. His sense of the absurd and his satirical finger pointing – even at the simplest things like the phrase, ‘First things first… I thought we could have first things third…’ is quick, schoolboy humour, and these quips are coming at you in rapid succession.
One of the nice things about this DVD is the number of shots of people in the audience with their heads thrown back in laughter, overcome with the hilarity of it all. Also nice to see are shots of people clearly making the comment, ‘Ooooh yeah! Marge is exactly like that!’ or ‘That’s just what he/she’s like!’
So, a few blue expostulations to be wary of if you are concerned about your children’s moral welfare, but a very funny man with some very amusing material. £14.39 at Amazon.com and cheap at half the price. As Peter Kay might have said, ‘Cheap at half the price. What does that mean? That’d be around £7.19. Of course it would be cheaper, stupid.’
He's a chubby guy with a big ending. Just what that involves (a balloon) you'll need to get this DVD to find out.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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I've had this DVD since it came out, I've seen it loads of times and it makes me cry laughing every time. i'm 26 and i remember bullseye - does this mean i'm not one of the "young people" anymore?!
AnitaM 14.01.2005 00:23
I've seen this show a couple of times on TV and once on DVD and it still cracks me up. He's a very funny man.
Katie2803 13.01.2005 21:30
I love Peter Kay. He was great on Jonathan Ross too, you should definately watch Top Of The Tower, his first DVD.
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Just a quick taxi ride from his mum's house, Peter Kay comes home to playLive at the ... more
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country and seen by over 300 000 people. The 180 night record-breaking run in arenas and theatres lasted an epic 9 months and still left people desperate for more. Fi...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
![Peter Kay - Live At The BoltonAlbert Halls [DVD] [2003]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78536372.jpg "Peter Kay - Live At The BoltonAlbert Halls [DVD] [2003]")
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