‘I’ll be honest with you: I’m getting sick of me too.” His TV ubiquity now the stuff of other comedians’ – and his own – punchlines, how can Romesh Ranganathan justify another evening in his company? Tonight, he starts by flattering the locals: a native of nearby Crawley, he waxes nostalgic about cutting his standup teeth on the Brighton scene. But mostly he’s an everyman, not just a Sussex man, a midlife misanthrope withdrawing from hard work, self-improvement and the prospect of ever making any new friends. Forty five years is enough, Romesh is here to tell us: no additional effort will now be made.
The authenticity of this pose we might question, not least given that slimline Ranganathan ran the London marathon last weekend. But he wears the world-weariness well, taking it now and then to droll extremes: see a set-piece about being forced to holiday in Portugal with – horror of horrors – another family. It’s not an unfamiliar pose for a middle-aged comic, mind you: his Hustle show delivers laughs, but not the shock of the new. It’s at its best when we glimpse something meaningful for Ranganathan beneath the standard-issue curmudgeonliness. He alludes to his sometimes brittle mental health. There’s a routine about envying the simple happiness David Beckham gets from frying mushrooms. He contrasts banal small talk with the antisocial screaming going on in his head.
Elsewhere, it’s a mixed bag. We know what’s coming with the joke that begins by criticising Jeff Bezos and Amazon, but that doesn’t stop it being dispiriting. There’s some first-base material on marital sex and anal hygiene. But there are also routines showing the touch that made Ranganathan ubiquitous in the first place. A riff on men and football transposes on to less likely scenarios the emotional experience of seeing your team ship a goal. A stout defence is launched of two-facedness, and – in a departure from the grumpiness – an amusing contrast drawn between hip-hop 2024-style, beloved of his son, and Romesh’s old-school alternative. It’s enough, more than enough, to countenance switching Ranganathan off your TV screens for a couple of hours and coming to see him on stage instead.