You do have to feel sorry for comedian Chris Ramsey who found his “2020” tour cancelled on the day it was due to start courtesy of the global pandemic. Still, here we are eighteen months later and, despite the huge success of his podcast during lockdown, as he bounds out onto the stage for the first of two sold-out nights at the York Barbican, it feels like a huge wave of emotion has washed over him.
Supporting Chris on the rescheduled tour is his mate and “friend of the podcast”, Carl Hutchinson who provides an entertaining half an hour or so warming the crowd up. From being rubbish at FIFA to his irritation with real ale drinkers to getting ridiculously drunk on a stag-do with Chris, the comedian reveals how he retrospectively gets in trouble with his own partner for unearthing long-buried secrets as his laddish comedy provides the perfect appetizer for the headliner.
A lot has happened to Chris Ramsey in the last eighteen months including the success of “Shagged, Married, Annoyed”, the hit podcast he records with Rosie Ramsey, his long-suffering wife. Explaining early on that the show has not been updated and features the exact show from the originally planned run, Ramsey admits how difficult it has been not to include the material in the podcast before jokingly warning fans not to run telling tales to his wife about anything he says during the show.
The show itself is a fantastic insight into Ramsey and the awkward situations his life as a husband and father lead him into. Those situations range from a ground-swallowing moment as he learns that Alexa has been monitoring private conversations he had with his wife Rosie to a truly embarrassing situation with his own son in a swimming pool changing room. Featuring heavily in nearly all of his tales, his wife and son are the instigators in most of his misery although an interaction with one of his son’s school friends leads Ramsey into his own comical situation with the boy’s father.
It isn’t just family life though that drives the comic to the brink. His success on Strictly Come Dancing in 2019 (where the comic finished fourth) came with its fair share of embarrassment for the funnyman. From the moment he was invited on the show, Ramsey reveals how he earned a special nickname from the dancers due to an off-the-cuff remark made during a press day before bringing the night to an end with a brilliant tale about a secret codename show organisers forced him to use.
Through all the embarrassment and awkwardness he endures on a seemingly daily basis, his stories are delivered in a typically laddish fashion. Admitting at the beginning how he’d kept the material as it was for this show, Ramsey signs off with howls of laughter ringing in his ears but not before his arch-nemesis Alexa makes sure she has the last laugh as she sends him on his way.
You can find a list of remaining tickets and dates here
