Rob Brydon & His Fabulous Band: A Festive Night of Songs & Laughter. Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow. Sunday 7th December, 2025

 

We know Rob's band are fabulous because he keeps telling us that, pausing for applause breaks whenever one of them does something individual. The night was not without merit, but I struggled to shed my inner Grinch for most of it. Yes, Rob has a fine singing voice. Yes, he can do several impressions (we got to hear them all: Ronnie Corbett, Michael Caine, Tom Jones, Steve Coogan, Man in a Box, young Elvis and older Elvis), but his schtick is getting as old as his audience (he quipped the tour should have been sponsored by Tena Lady, but they let him down). He also joked that it felt like they were playing to care home residents. 

Highlights: 

His Christmas song after the interval, incorporating all the people he'd spoken to during his crowd work. 

Bringing on a ten-strong choir to accompany him at the end. Their voices soared, providing a scale to the performance that was lacking previously.

Gregor Fisher (Scotland's leading campanologist, according to Rob) played his bell on stage for one song. 

The expressions and reactions of the audience member in the Christmas jumper Rob brought on stage to play the glockenspiel (xylophone) were priceless. A total ham, but funny with it.

Lowlights:

The spotlight didn't extend to the sides of the stage, so whenever Rob wandered that way to talk to someone in the audience, he fell into shadow.

All the Christmas songs, though, he did his best to inject some humour into some, such as the medley, smashing one song into another via connecting words.    

Rob can be funny, but this show leaned too much toward his singing, and while his voice is good, it wasn't that great tonight. I felt he was holding back, possibly struggling with catarrh. And it was primarily a festive evening full of Christmas songs, which gave me the boak.

Video and photography were not allowed during the performance, so here's a couple from the bow.

Ticket Price: £40.00 x2 + £4.40 Service Charge x2 + Handling Fee £1.75 =  £90.55 from Ticketmaster

Brydon, Mack & Mitchell, Town to Town. Theate Royal, Glasgow. Wednesday, 25th May, 2022

It wasn't "Would I Lie To You?" but it was funny.

The three talented comedians entertained us with their quick-witted responses to their audience interaction. Very little material was scripted bar the opening and finale but that didn't matter as all three are masters of the quip and the banter between them was top notch too. 

The evening's format consisted of a quiz in the first half, where Lee and David were to guess the most popular answer according to an audience survey to questions about Glasgow. The second half involved the three acting as agony uncles to written dilemmas posed to them by members of the audience.  

An example of the type of quiz question was "Which celebrity makes you most embarrassed that they represent Glasgow". Top answer: Nicola Sturgeon, followed by Lulu and Bible John.

One dilemma involved a woman asking what she should do about her partner wanting her to suck his toe, the one whose nail fell off because it was infected - their answer: say NO.

The funny lay in how they got to this answer. They did this by interviewing the dilemma setter in much the same manner as they would do on WILTY. Roving microphones on all four tiers of the theatre allowed everyone to hear the probing discussion. 

When asked to give advice to the man whose wife no longer found him sexy now that he had a double penile hernia, the three bantered suggestions for a while then asked to speak to him. Only it turned out he wasn't there. His wife replied instead, informing them he couldn't make it as he was recovering at home from the operation to fix the problem. A third story involved a window cleaner wondering if it was okay for him to put a note through a deceased person's door asking for his money, having already spotted her corpse in an open coffin in the front room. She hadn't paid him for a few months so he added on a few extra cleans to his final bill hoping the bereaved family wouldn't want their departed relative to be buried in debt.

The quality of the night was tempered by the calibre of the audience. There were a few misfires (the tuneless singer and the whistler) but these were in the minority. Overall, this was glorious spontaneous comedy. 

Now, was I telling a Lie or a Truth? 

Ticket Price: £45.18 plus order processing fee £1 and venue levy £1.50.