The Leicester Mercury Comedian Of The Year award is one of those things where outside of comedy, no one will have heard of it, but inside comedy, oh boy is it a thing. A quick glance at the Wikipedia article of previous winners and nominees is all one really needs to demonstrate how big a deal it is. So obviously, when Alasdair is nominated, I’m going to be there. So too, it turns out, will be his mum, step-dad, and like eight of their friends (herein referred to, as Alasdair’s mum has coined the group, Rent-A-Crowd).
This is, of course, quite an anxious time to meet them, with Alasdair’s stress absorbed into me through osmosis and then my own anxiety about him being ok, the culmination of a few months’ of stress and worry. But it’s fine! They are lovely and supportive and welcome me with open arms.
It’s not only Alasdair that I know in the final - out of eight finalists, three of them are Bristol acts, so there’s also our friends Eva and Julia in the mix. It’s a weird state of affairs, but hey, we produce good comedy!
It’s a mixed bag, in terms of acts. Eva absolutely smashes it and deservedly wins the prize. Julia stumbles a bit, but is still good. I don’t think the two acts who placed alongside Eva particularly deserved to over a couple of the other acts (biases included and accounted for, and still). Sindhu Vee is nominally MCing but it’s more hosting - she does some material at the top of each half and explains what’s going on, but there’s not much explicit building up an audience mood or atmosphere going on. Between the finalists performing and the winner being announced, last year’s winner Daniel Petrie performs essentially a time-filling set, but jesus he’s good. His first three lines are incredible, and there is a lovely, lovely joke about lollipop men that deserved much more than me loudly guffawing by myself.
I was so, so proud of Alasdair. Having seen him do that set over and over again the last few months, trying to get it just right and just on time, I don’t think any of his run throughs were better than his performance on the night. Bang on the clock, bang on the laughs. He deserved to place, but that’s by the by. He’s a better comedian for it, and got at least some of the recognition he deserved.