On Dave's One Night Stand

April 2011

More Chris Addison videos

Chris Addison started his comedy career by winning Manchester’s City Life Comedian of the Year Award in 1995.

Three years later, he performed his first solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe, which earned him a nomination for Perrier best newcomer. He was shortlisted for the main award twice more: for 2004's Civilisation – which also won him a Barry Award nomination at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and was later made into a Radio 4 series – and 2005's Atomicity.

He won the Chortle Award for best compere in 2003 and was nominated for best headliner in 2005.

In 2000 , he co-hosted Channel 4's short-lived Dotcomedy with Gail Porter, featuring gags taken from the internet. He is now best known for starring in BBC Two's political comedy The Thick Of It, and its 2009 movie spin-off In The Loop, playing an out-of-his-depth spin doctor. And he alsoo starred in his own BBC Two sitcom Lab Rats, a surreal, gaggy venture which received a lukewarm critical reception.

Addison also co-wrote and co-starred in Radio 4's political satire The Department, along with John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman, which ran for 14 episodes between 2004 aand 2006.

He has alwo written two novels: Cautionary Tales For Grown-Ups in 2006 and It Wasn't Me: Why Everybody Is To Blame And You're Not in 2008.

Chris Addison 2010 tour
Live Review
Nottingham Playhouse

Chris Addison’s recent forays into television have been mixed, to say the least. In fact, it’s hard to square his naturalistic performance in the sublimely vicious The Thick Of It with his childishly surreal – and little-mourned – sitcom Lab Rats.

Such endeavours have kept him away from the live stage for the past five years or so – though by his assured performance in this new tour you wouldn’t know it. The only change since he’s been away is where once he revelled in the high-concept, meticulously structured show, this is a looser affair with no grand theme. Maybe some audiences would have baulked at attending comedy nights entitled Atomicity or Civilization – even though the charming Addison was never as highbrow as the titles might have suggested.

He is, however, unmistakably an archetypal middle-class liberal Englishman. If the Guardian Society section had human form, it would be Chris Addison; the only difference being that the newspaper supplement is thick with advertising, and Addison is breakably thin.

That he’s no sportsman comes as no surprise, but the ‘revelation’ inspires one of the best parts of the show. Anyone who was always among the last picked for school teams will identify with his brilliantly self-deprecations of his humiliations in the remedial PE set; while the jocks can simply laugh at his physical incompetence.

His typically English hang-ups – particularly about sex – also provide a running theme; the act being a tedious, necessary duty to be performed before Cranford comes on. In this, and so often in the show, it’s the perfect eloquence of the language he uses that generates the laughs.

It’s backed up with a big performance, making expert use of those gangly limbs. At times, it’s a little too falsely exaggerated – especially when combined with his occasional habit of sniggering at his own gags – but generally it injects a useful physicality into a passionate performance. Meek reserve, at least on stage, is the only one of his class traits that he doesn’t display.

Addison uses that energy to rail furiously against the BNP and the Catholic church, but he’s not an explicitly issue-driven comedian, and his Pope material is much better when he’s being surreal, rather than opinionated. Indeed, it’s funnier still when he directs his rage at less deserving targets, such as wearers of Ugg boots. What could be more middle-England than whinging at the inconsequential?

Addison has pop at that, too, in the closest this show comes to a theme: that despite living in an age of unprecedented convenience, we – and especially the media – love to moan that the country’s going ‘to hell in a handbasket’ at any minor irritation. Just look at the hysterical overreaction to one day of snow, he points out.

This all gets plenty of laughs of recognition from an audience that seems as broadly middle-England as Addison himself. Indeed, when a reference to E4’s Skins – the drama in which Addison plays the uptight headmaster – comes up, it sails over the heads of all but a small gaggle of youngsters.

Although he doesn’t look it, Addison is now 38 and a new father. Naturally that means he talks about children a bit, even though he presciently acknowledges that it’s a subject almost guaranteed to prove a turn-off. A couple of other items in this grab-bag of routines don’t quite soar either; but it’s never a slog, just a more relaxed pace before another onslaught of Addison’s prime material, worth the five-year wait.

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Saw Chris at Bloomsbury Theatre earlier this month, he was great. Despite such a long show he had the material and physical strength to never let the audience down. lovely stuff

Pat Garnett, April 2009

Watched Chris as part of Edinburgh and Beyond at the New Players Theatre and he was amazing.

Tim, October 2006

The best comedian I've ever seen at the Edinburgh festival (and I've seen lots).

Jass, March 2006

I noticed a few Bill Hicks gags too, but it didn't matter, they were but drops in an ocean of outstanding material. Since I last saw him, Addison's grown every more gangly and a little foppish, but he hits the comedy nail with some force. His act had everything from puerile (but funny) silliness right up to gags about rhetorical structures, all delivered at breackneck speed and with unswerving enthusiasm. Really, really good.

Jason Holdcroft, November 2005

I saw Chris at the Wales Millennium Centre last night. I thoroughly enjoyed the show. He had very well thought and original material; it's just a shame he had to steal one of Bill Hicks' classics! With that incident aside, it was an excellent show.

Ifan Rhys, November 2005

Fantastic! Really made me laugh and think at the same time - a novel experience

[Anon], November 2005

I was blown away. It's great when a comedian makes you think as well as laugh.

Dan, October 2005

Saw Chris in Hull tonight, brilliant. Second time Ive seen him - thought he was wonderful frist time but he exceeded my expectations tonight. Come round our house Chris, we could all rant at the telly together.

Karen, September 2005

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