After quitting Never Mind the Buzzcocks, comedian Simon Amstell vowed to get back onto the comedy circuit, his aim no doubt to share his slightly odd world view with the student audience.
His live DVD illustrates just how much he has developed over his time fronting the popular music panel game show. Barely at all, if the truth be told. Retaining the same neuroses and odd onstage demeanour, Amstell relates his life to the audience as if he was Woody Allen in possession of the body of a slightly odd “jolly hockey sticks” lesbian boarding school marm.
This isn’t to say that there are no laughs in Amstell’s routines – only that they play heavily on this Allen-esque persona that has always been slightly stupid and is terminally embarrassed about his entire life. Tales about “cat AIDS” and mooning his grandmother are all very well but while he is clearly an adept performer, the tone of Amstell’s material still resides in the realm of puerile teenage sniggering.
Simon Amstell is 31.
Now he’s not alone in playing bum gags and being ignorant of feline diseases, but there is a juxtaposition in his work between the interesting Allenisms and the back of the class humour that by now he should surely be moving on from. Whether this means Simon Amstell is on the brink of genius or failure is another matter entirely, but there is little here that can in any terms be considered “classic”.
The Do Nothing show is a good one, all in all, but Amstell lacks the real punch that the bigger names like Mack, O’Briain and Byrne bring to the stage. Fans of Buzzcocks and Amstell will find they enjoy this, but it does seem time for this comedian to grow up a bit.
Extras
A couple of bonus features on the Do Nothing disc are of particular interest.
In An Artist Prepares is a twenty minute behind the scenes video of Amstell “before the show” at various locations on his tour in a sort of “warts and all” view of the comic in warm up and transit mode. There is possibly more value to this than the main feature as we get to see a comic going on the road and struggling with his material, something that many of us have been through and thought “I’m the only one.”
Meanwhile The Interview sees Amstell in conversation with Tim Key, in which the idea is that Amstell is uncomfortable in the unscripted situations seen in An Artist Prepares, to which the “DVD people” responded by using an interview for the buyers of the DVD to “get to know” Simon Amstell. There is a certain success in this, and again the extra is possibly more valuable than the main feature.
Do Nothing Live is out now – Amazon lists the DVD for for £6.99.
Related articles
- How Simon Amstell shook up BBC Breakfast (guardian.co.uk)
- DVDs for Christmas (telegraph.co.uk)
