Just thought I’d make a quick post to document my last two comedy shows of the year. Last Thursday I was at The Lowry’s Lyric Theatre to see John Robins perform his latest comedy show, ‘Howl’. I’d had the ticket since the beginning of January and when I bought it, the only ones still available were on the back row of the lower circle – the furthest back I’ve sat in there!
‘John Robins – Howl’ at The Lowry.
When I was at the Edinburgh Fringe back in August, he was doing two shows – ‘Howl’ and a ‘Work-in-Progress’, so I decided to go to the WIP since I knew I already had a ticket for ‘Howl’ later in the year, and guessed that it would probably contain more stuff that wouldn’t end up in the main show. The Lowry show was in two parts and ran for about an hour and a half, and I was pleased to discover that whilst I recognised a bit of the material from Edinburgh, the majority was new to me. I thought he was really good… it’s a weird kind of show because it focusses a lot on mental health and dealing with alcoholism, so although it was quite dark and heavy in places, it was also pretty powerful and really funny, and I think the balance he struck was spot on.
Then on Sunday night, I was back at the Lowry for a recording of RHLSTP – Richard Herring’s podcast show that’s currently on tour. I’d seen him post on Twitter / X in the week that there were a few tickets still available, and I used to watch a lot of them on YouTube, but now they only post short clips on there, so I’ve got out of the habit of listening to the more recent episodes. Anyway, I saw that his guests for this show were Justin Moorhouse and Katie Mulgrew so bought a ticket for the recording.
RHLSTP at The Lowry with Katie Mulgrew and Richard Herring.
Me and Richard Herring.
It was a really fun evening and I was really glad I’d found out about the show in time! The only negative to the whole night was that afterwards I queued to buy a signed book and get a photo, but this meant that when I got to the MediaCity Metrolink stop, it was just about 15 minutes until the final tram of the night… except that as I was watching the ‘time to arrival’ decrease, it got to 2 minutes remaining, but no tram came. And then after a few more minutes the tram totally disappeared of the information screen!
I really didn’t want to have to get a taxi home because that would make it quite an expensive night out, but then realised that the last bus back to Parrs Wood hadn’t left yet, so was able to get that and take the scenic route back to the East Didsbury tram stop where my car was parked!