3 weeks Ago
The last time Greg Davies did stand-up, seven years ago, I wasn’t even an adult. So what a delight it was to see this titan of comedy finally return to the stage and make a pit stop to Brighton on his new tour: Full Fat Legend. My face was quite literally aching from so much laughing at the end of the evening at the Dome, which saw Davies delve into the matter of being a so-called “legend” and muse on the question of “who I really am”.
The tour takes its name from the words yelled – often from “men in transit vans” – at Davies on an almost daily basis: “Mr Gilbert, you absolute legend, where’s Will?” That’s a reference to Davies’ role as the authoritarian head of sixth form in The Inbetweeners, a teacher who relentlessly picks on the sensible and nerdy Will. “Well bearing in mind Simon Bird is a 40-year-old father of two, probably at home I expect”, Davies retorts with his signature raised eyebrow and puffed out chest. Davies is a master of pacing, adeptly taking the audience through a potted history of his life – from growing up in rural Shropshire in the seventies, to his 13 years as a teacher in the nineties and foray into comedy in the early 2000s.
When we weren’t laughing hysterically, we were waiting with quiet curiosity to see where Davies was taking us next. There was not an ounce of awkwardness or moment of tedium - frankly Davies had us eating out of the palm of his hand. Nothing was off the table – the scatological, the sexual, the sombre – Davies seized them by the horns and had us laughing in hysterics.
A screen behind was used to immense comical effect, with punch lines and snaps of Sean Connery and Martin Clunes popping up as well as a clip of Davies sparring with Danny Dyer on Alan Carr’s panel show in the early noughties. There is talk of the prostate and numerous trips to the loo in the night, an accidental call to an ex-girlfriend – that’s the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions – a grilling from Susannah Reid at Buckingham Palace and an intimate inspection from his brother-in-law on Christmas morning. If Davies’ life is even half as hilarious as he makes out in his stand-up, lord knows how he gets through the day without falling about laughing.
To echo the sentiment of the "men in transit vans", Greg Davies, you are a legend..
