COMEDY-A-JOJO: MADAM JO JO’S, LONDON 20 May 2003

So, Tuesday night in a Soho transvestite bar eh? Well, not in ‘that’ way, but certainly frequenting one of London’s most famous dens to witness comedy group, Underhand Productions’ opening night.

Underhand, “a fundamentalist production company” is the progeny of long-time collaborators Rohan Achaya (of ‘60 acts in 60 minutes’ at Edinburgh Festival fame) and Matt Holt, with writer and contributor, Mike Smith and DJ Jim Morrison.

Well-aimed staccato bursts of acts rattled through from 8pm to 10.30pm reducing us all to fits of laughter. Susan Earl broke out MC’ing in character as voluble Sue Cheroux - a hideous vision of Butlin’s disco glam and alcopops. Then Peter Gold kicked off with the first of his three songs
that night - which was genuinely good material and the crowd strapped their laughing gear firmly on. I’ll never think about necrophilia in the same way again!

Then PBH came on. The initials really don’t prepare you for this 60-year-old man. The blurp said “utterly astonishing”, which it was. It was like cutting the head off the Rules Of Comedy Chicken, as he made dying on stage a wonder to behold. Tom Price belted out several cracking gags from
behind his oh-so-sweet demeanour. Andy Zaltzman, in addition to his angry kid hairstyle, had a repertoire of razor-sharp topical gags. Rob Deering was truly funny- armed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of James Bond and a guitar he reviewed each film requested by the audience into four bars from the film’s theme tune.

Ray Peacock was Special Needs from Leeds- loud and proud and plain funny to be around. Oram and Meeten would be better suited to a crowd already saturated with Edinburgh Fringe -most people at Comedy A Jo Jo having finished midweek work only a few hours earlier. Whilst they did improve in their second act, they failed to blow my hair back in the way that others had achieved so well.

But all in all it was a cracking night, a big success for Rohan, Matt, Mike et al. And be aware: this is NOT about mother-in-law jokes or brash PMT women or Tourettes freaks. This is quite raw, very now, and worth seeing. Comedy-a-JoJo begin a punishing routine of fortnightly line-ups and we’ve been promised The Cultural Ambassador for Wales, The Upper Class Rapper and a ‘deadpan Swede with fantastic timing’. I can’t wait.

words: Rufus Sanders

more info at www.underhand.net.