HEADLINERS COMEDY CLUB CHISWICK

First Laugh. Will Watts visits Chiswick's new comedy venue

By liberal application of that most traditional and sympathetic building material - money - the old warehouse round the back of the George IV pub on Chiswick High Road has been converted into a lavish comedy club, complete with cabaret tables and chairs, lights, soundproofing, stage and bar.

Last Friday was the inaugural night, and the club filled to its 250 capacity with glittering (or at least well-oiled) Chiserati eager to be in at the start.

I'm afraid I have a quarrel with the MC, whose name I shamefully neglected to write down. An MC stands in time between the audience and the proper act that is about to come on. As such, he should tell one minute's worth of topical jokes and get off. Headliner's MC, however, felt obliged to give us quite a lot of himself. He gurned a ventriloquist's alphabet, he mimed to Nat King Cole, he set fire to someone's £10 note, he contrived to make a toy computer speak dirty words in its Hawkingesque voice ('Ewe. Far. Car.'). Other, less prejudiced souls laughed.

First act proper was Jim Gaffigan, an American who according to the MC had 'appeared seven times on David Letterman'. Gaffigan looked like a rather earnest economics teacher. He waxed philosophical about present-giving ('He gave me a book? That's not a gift, that's an assignment. I'll read your book if you go mow my lawn') and the mystery of the fresh ground peppermill ritual in restaurants ('this magic wooden wand'). This was fine, except when he broke his own rhythm with asides whispered into the mike, supposedly representing the thoughts of his audience. 'I hope he goes away now…' 'I wish he'd stop talking about gay people…' This came across as lack of self-confidence. Surely a seven times Lettermanite isn't freaked by liddle ole Chizzy-Wizzy?

You almost know Ricky Grover already, a geezer of Jupitusian proportions who has appeared in the BBC2 shows 'orrible and Red Dwarf. He danced on dressed as a boxer, his huge head squished into facemask. But the aggro was just show. Grover is a pussycat, a full time cockney-fatty who aims most of his gags at a single butt. His own. 'I fink sex is a terrible fing', he bellowed out from somewhere inside his mask in that curious semi-falsetto that is only possessed by really fat men.

All that jumpin' abaht… All that being sick…' We sat helpless in the sweaty palm of his paw, waiting for his punchline. 'Payin' all that money.' A fat man telling jokes about the disadvantages of being fat is one of the oldest routines in the book, but old routines get that way by being sublime when done right. Grover's timing is perfect.

Last up was Geoff Boyz, whose Glaswegian accent and observational comedy inevitably reminded one of Mr Pamela Stephenson. It's tough for him that he is typecast by geography as the Wee Yin. He has enormous energy, pirouetting gracefully in the role of an exhausted elderly straphanger on the Tube, but his observations stop one level too soon. It's just a bit too obvious. But his Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci impressions deliver as promised.
So that was the very first night at Headliners: two 'goods', one 'excellent and an MC. Headliners continues every Friday and Saturday henceforth, with fresh acts each week. Come see.

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