Holiday!

Me and the boy have had a few days together and we’ve done the usual comic-shopping and movie-going ritual and during this we both decided Batman Begins was quite cool and a distinct improvement on the shite-awful but camp-tastic Batman And Robin.

But a new family ritual has also entered the bonding fray over the past year and this involves me, the missus and the not-so-little fella going to stand-up comedy gigs, which are probably better for his general well-being than the CGI-fests me and him now enjoy.

The three of us have so far seen the brilliant Bill Bailey, the fabulous Omad Dahjili and most recently this week we saw Andy Kindler. He’s an American comedian and comedy actor and he arrived on a wave of astoundingly good previews and publicity. Sadly Soho Theatre was only half-full and his routine was very hit and miss as he dabbled with new material of varied quality. The audience generally couldn’t quite decide if the poor sod was just dying on his arse or if he wasn’t all that bothered which was a shame as some of his material was quite good. He’s obviously quite a funny man but he just wasn’t on that night…

Thankfully I’d already got my comedy quota for the day by tuning into Radio 4 to listen to The Bearded Ladies for the first time. A friend of mine is one quarter of this four-woman comedy troupe who were a big hit at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago but this was the first time I’d actually listened to the show, now in its second series, and it was pretty good.

It’s basically a sketch show and it’s more quirky and gentle than biting and vicious humour but it’s well worth a listen if you’re kicking your heels on Tuesday at 6.30pm. I particularly liked the short sketch about the wife text messaging the drunken husband and the woman on the sinking boat refusing the lifejacket on the grounds that it wasn’t fashionable.

Alan Partridge, Goodness Gracious Me, The League Of Gentlemen, Dead Ringers and the wonderful Mighty Boosh all started off in similar slots on Radio 4 so see it as a chance to grab an earful of something that could well be on your telly screens quite soon.

One bit of advice, though… Do be careful what you search for if you look up The Bearded Ladies on the internet. I typed in beardedladies.com instead of their actual address of beardedladies.co.uk and it definitely was not my friend in the pictures…