Al Murray - The Pub Landlord, "Gig For Victory", King's Theatre, Glasgow. Sunday 11th September, 2022

Today, as I wandered into Aldi's, a toddler, in a shopping cart, pointed to me and said, "You're fat". I didn't know how to respond (except to buy more sweets - not for him, the cheeky bastard, although he did have parents). I should have replied, "And you shit your pants" but being a potty mouth to a child is frowned upon in polite society. 

That rule doesn't apply to Al Murray. He can say anything in character to his audience. 

Cut to eight hours later. Al Murray took to the King's Theatre stage, praising us all for being survivors, thanking us for waiting two and a half years to see his four-time, rescheduled show. He worked the crowd for a full forty minutes as The Pub Landlord before we get any sniff of prepared material. Picking mainly on the front two rows, he elicits their names, the names of their children, the status of their relationships and what jobs they perform, making quips every time with lightning-quick speed. This interaction also serves as fuel for his cocktail of callbacks, thrown in at every opportunity. It's a celebration of spontaneous humour and very funny, whether it involves throwing packets of crisps at the man he identified as having Type 2 diabetes, throwing shade at the students for being too woke or getting us all to thump our chests and repeat the word, Faaamily, whenever someone revealed they had children, picking on one young man in a white T-shirt to stand up and say it alone, all because his shirt had a French word on it. 

Sitting on my left was an older gentleman. If I could paint a picture of him for you... I'd be an artist and could insert image instead of needing to use words. He was a larger man with a grey beard and he was with his friend. They both had two tumblers of drinks and he kept his at his feet. This meant he had to sit with his legs splayed apart encroaching on my space. Every time he reached over his stomach, he bumped my leg. I started imagining he had some sort of scrotal inflammation that necessitated his open posture, possibly an STI that left him with elephant-sized testicles and a rotting trunk. I edged to my right but there was no escaping him. His aftershave was so pungent (possibly to mask the putrid stench of his decaying genitals), it burned my throat. I feared I would need to down one of his drinks or start coughing but then wondered if the clear liquid was actually stored between his legs so he could use it as a sterilisation dip for his cock. 

Bizarrely, the gentleman left at the start of the second half as the lights went down and didn't come back, though his friend remained. Suddenly, I had all the space I wanted. I could splay my legs wide apart. Which then worried me. Had he given me his STI? Would I be able to drive home? How would I explain my enlarged testicular condition to my wife? ("I was at Al Murray, honestly")

I closed my legs and enjoyed the second half.

Here, Al explained how we are all the subjects of a history book, we just don't know if we're in the beginning, the middle or the end, when 'we're fucked'. He also compared the sacrifices people made during their history - the war - with those we had to make during Covid - furlough, big tellies and watching Tiger King. 

He also described how you can boil every film down to one thing - you can't always get what you want. He took many examples from the audience to prove it, eg. Braveheart - Mel Gibson wanted to make a historically accurate epic - "you can't always get what you want".

He closed the show with a sing-song, "There's nothing rhymes with Covid". 

He is such a good live performer. Highly recommended.

And I'm still fat.