Rochdale Comedy Club Review

Michael Redmond

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The Rochdale Comedy Club welcomed Michael Redmond and Ray Peacock for their monthly comedy event tonight (Saturday 8 May 2010).

The venue for the show was Lime, above the Flying Horse pub on the Town Hall Square. The gig was intimate with about 25 guests.

The night began with compere Rob Riley warming up the audience, he explained nights at Rochdale Comedy Club are always ‘delightful.’

The microphone played up to start with, and led to the line ‘fancy coming to Rochdale and having microphone problems!’

This got the audience in the mood for the first act.

Scottish comedian, Michael Redmond best know for his role as Father Stone in Father Ted kicked off the evening, he spent a good amount of his 30 minute slot talking to the audience, as well as using material about the weather, his day to day life and being middle-aged.

He really made the audience laugh when he drank somebody else’s pint and also pretended to light a cigarette.

Following a fifteen minute interval actor and comedian Ray Peacock took to the stage, Mr Peacock does a lot of TV warm up work for crowds and really that’s all he did tonight.

The reviewer was expecting the chatting with the audience to stop and the material to shine through. Apart from the odd gag it didn’t.

However, it appeared that the audience were thoroughly enjoying the routine and the atmosphere and there was a lot of banter, but too much focus on audience participation.

Of course, there was a joke about the review and Mr Peacock predicted a two star result for tonight.

There was a lack of material but the audience was largely engaged and made up for the number of empty seats.

Compere Rob Riley said: “Rochdale Comedy Club has been running for just over a year. The reason for getting it started was because if people in Rochdale wanted to see comedians they would have to travel to Manchester and it works out very expensive.

“I think the audience has been really nice and have had a good laugh. They are great folk here in Rochdale.”