Tim Vine - 'Breeeep!' Review - 20th April, King's Hall, Ilkley

Tim Vine - 'Breeeep!' Review at King's Hall, Ilkley - New Show Sees the Dad Joke King as Daft as Ever, and Happy to Revisit the Hits

Tim Vine could very much be framed as a comedian calling back to a bygone era. His repertoire of rapid-fire puns, stupid songs and daft homemade props feels like somewhat of a callback to the old-school variety performers. That's not to say that Tim is simply a novelty act though, as the pure unadulterated sense of silliness he purveys is something I think only he (and perhaps his good friend Milton Jones) could carry off. So because he was one of the first comedians I ever got into, I've been a big fan of Tim for a long time, owning nearly all of his DVDs, but despite that, I'd never seen him live. So when I learned some tickets were going spare for his new show 'Breeeep!' at the King's Hall that evening, I couldn't have said yes faster.

When we got there, while not an important point, I did think it was funny that me and my brother were among about the 10 youngest people there by at least a good 30 years. Again, not important, and not a dig either necessarily, but it does very much support my theory that Tim Vine is a comedian you could take your nan to see without issue, because it seems a few people did. Anyway, up first is Tim’s right hand man, magician John Archer, the first man to fool Penn and Teller and BGT 2019 semi-finalist. As expected throughout his short set he displays a few very impressive and surprisingly elaborate magic tricks, my favourites being having the audience name a dog letter-by-letter at random, only for that name to inexplicably appear on a pre-made collar, or getting an audience member to randomly come up with a new punchline for a joke, and having that appear engraved on a large custom playing card. I was genuinely impressed. I’d had a bit of a fascination with the mechanics of magic for a fair bit and it’s fair to say John really brought it back to me. In true light entertainment fashion, he ended his set by singing a standard, choosing to cover the ‘Happy Trails’ theme on his ukulele. Granted this choice did seem to come a bit out of nowhere, but it was still quite an enjoyable finish. The one thing I would say needed a bit of work, ironically, are John’s comedy skills. He’s not unfunny by any means, but his interstitial jokes as segues between tricks were mostly characterised by a couple very mild mannered dad jokes, the kind you might hear your avuncular uncle tell at the family Christmas party. The jokes were certainly amusing, but I think his humour might need a bit more punch, presence and conviction before I can say he's truly well rounded.

Then, after a short interval, the Punslinger himself comes onstage, and instantly from his yellow and blue golfing garb and typically chipper demeanour, I could tell this was going to be a lot of fun. As I’ve said a couple times already, Tim definitely seems a descendent of the variety show/light entertainment tradition, but also with a dose of pure silliness that borders on the absurd, and makes him truly unique. Some might look at my use of adjectives like “silly” and think that all it is is basically stand-up for kids, but I vehemently disagree. Yes, it’s family friendly and enjoyable for all ages, but I think his appeal is universal. The way he delivers jokes and songs is just pure distilled comedy. No long intellectual monologues, no political rants, just straight humour and fun. I mean hell, the guy came with a prop bush on his head. I implore anyone to try to look at that and not laugh at least a little bit. Trick question, you can’t. 

Like all of his other shows, this certainly isn’t a reinvention, but rather once again a display of him joyously playing to his strengths for an hour straight, and so it’s resultantly very enjoyable. Rapid fire puns, ridiculous songs and outlandish homemade props all make very welcome appearances. It seems as though, perhaps the older he gets, the more he tries to one up himself in truly how ridiculous his material can be, and here, it shows to great effect. Whether it’s tales of a recurring skydiving midwife, due to his baldness a need for “a shampoo just called ‘Shoulders’”, his career as an animal law enforcer, or the many fanciful yet hilarious and nonsensical encounters with celebrities and their non existent siblings or constricting buttocks. Tim has an uncanny ability to play with and manipulate the phonetics and semantics of words, as well as take celebrity names well known to the audience and flip them on their head for great comedic effect. Not only does this lend to some brilliantly zany gags, but if you view him as a character in context of these strange diatribes, it almost makes him seem like the eccentric everyman of an LSD addled fairytale, a view that I think enhances the inherent “dad joke-ness” of his material tenfold. Of course there’s other bits of semantic tomfoolery that are great for similar reasons, using many an adjective’s semantic broadening such as with “zesty” and running with it as far as he can. You can almost hear him chuckling to himself writing it.

That’s not to say this is just an hour of re-hashes though, as Tim does occasionally stray into some new territory, and truth be told it made for some of my favourite material of the night. Whether it’s his almost observational contemplation about confusion over sugar types, or use of “longer joke music” when a joke lasts longer than ten seconds, it shows he still has plenty of tricks up his preposterously sized metaphorical sleeves, and I’m all the gladder for it. The latter also has the comic side effect of making him appear to be wistfully recounting a tale from his youth, while the former’s lack of a clear punchline seems like it’s a genuine quandary of his rather than a silly flight of fantasy. The very straight, anti humour delivery dare I say has a hint of Andy Kaufman about it. Perhaps the most ingenious moment comes when, in the middle of a series of jokes, an audience member somehow predicts the punchlines. A rightly befuddled Tim asks the question on everyone’s mind: How did you know? Only for it to be revealed this audience member is in fact the sound engineer. At this revelation, the glee on Tim’s face was unmistakable, as he reminds us he’s the one “steering the comedy ship.” The whole interaction seemed somewhat similar to a kid revelling in the fact that his magic trick genuinely fooled a room full of adults. I couldn’t help but laugh with him. Yeah, it was kinda goofy in a way, but still incredibly well done and pretty amusing, so I had to give the guy props for his schemery. 

Ah yes, props, yet another string to Tim’s bow that are integral to his act. For people who say he’s just a dad joke merchant, his use of props shows a creativity that if you somehow didn’t glimpse of already, is deliberately shoved in your face. After all, how better to augment the punchline of a joke about Dairylea Dunkers than to build a massive plastic replica and put it on your head? That’s what I think the props are all about: having a great joke, but using a prop to again, augment it, take it one step further, and it works a treat. Whether it’s the plant hat I mentioned earlier displaying the misuse of herbal shampoo, or his homemade signs that’ve become a staple in his act getting some very good audience responses. The one that read “ACTION” was broken though, apparently someone wanted a piece of it. So you see, in any form Tim still manages to engage in a bit of linguistic cheekiness. There was even, if I remember correctly, a segment where Tim had an argument with his own stomach. I say “if I remember correctly” because, as you might have noticed, the jokes always come thick and fast with Tim, and so even with notes, trying to review his shows is very difficult. It’s not all rapid-fire though. There are the longer “word jokes” if you like that I mentioned earlier, but one prop, a canvas picture of a house in a corn field, sits on stage for at least half an hour before the punchline is revealed, after which it’s met with laughs and a collective “ohhhhhh” from the audience. It’s moments like that where you realise Tim isn’t just rattling off a compilation of jokes, but that there’s quite a big amount of thought that goes into its structure as a show, which is very well done, albeit subtly. An offshoot from his use of props are the couple interactive games Tim plays with the audience using props, such as asking them to guess the contents of blurred photos of his garden with hilariously nonsensical answers, or asking us to identify the celebrity heads that pass the window of a cardboard house. These jokes in particular, as well as some of the other prop jokes actually, are more examples of things that don’t exactly have a punchline, but rather are just an excuse for Tim to go “hey guys, look at this weird thing I did!” If it was any other comedian, I’d be questioning what the point is in putting that in your act, but because of Tim’s charisma, likeability and his stage presence, he gets away with it. He somehow makes the lack of a point funny. It’s another bit of evidence in my thesis that only Tim Vine can get away with telling Tim Vine’s jokes, if that makes sense.

I’ve spoken a few times about Tim’s interactions with the audience, and it’s perhaps where you see him at his most casual, away from his lovable, eccentric, clownish persona, and just having a good bit of banter, which adds a perhaps necessary yet subtle shift in dynamic. It might be arguable, given how jovial he is about it, that sometimes he has more fun telling the audience “applause isn’t going to catch on” if a particular joke isn’t well received, than he did actually telling it, or it could well be a different type of enjoyment. There was also a segment in the show if my memory serves (which as I say isn’t the most reliable), where Tim went into the audience, probably with the anticipation of some level of hijinx, asking for jokes. While our worthwhile contributions were thin on the ground to say the least, it was Tim’s obvious amusement and perhaps slight befuddlement at our lack of viable material that got the biggest laugh by far. Again, not mocking, just a good bit of old fashioned banter. By a similar token, there really is something to be said for his ability to make light of his own mishaps. A lot of comedians do, but I feel with Tim there’s a bit more resting on it. If, say, Dave Gorman stumbles over his words, it’s usually just a quick witty remark and we move on. For Tim, because his whole routine relies on the delivery on the punchline, he maybe doesn’t have the ability to brush it off as easily, and so to see him sometimes humorously revel in it going wrong is as honourable as it is funny. There was one particular joke with a pretty long, drawn out setup, which, given the punchline, would've been quite funny, if he hadn’t forgotten about a sentence at the beginning that made the whole thing make sense. So, sure the joke kind of fell apart, but his reaction of “oh flippin’ ‘eck I forgot that bit” and subsequently breaking into a fit of laughter, as well as the typically British shouts of “wwheyyy!” from the audience was even more joyous. It’s some moments like that that kind of seem like Tim signalling to the audience “yeah I know it’s silly, of course it is, but we’re having a good laugh aren’t we?” Yes, we certainly are.

One final skill of Tim’s I’ve yet to mention is his writing of comedy songs. With the help of a set of kooky, colourful, odd instrumentals, Tim reminds us of all the reasons he’s been hilarious up until now, only in quirky musical form. There’s linguistic subversion a-plenty, like serenading us with a made up backstory should he end up in criminal trouble (I’ll let you work that one out), or dancing around telling us about all of his good times, like 11:10 for instance. There are examples where a novel concept for musical japery works well in practice, like a sing along song that no one actually sings along with, or Tim reimagining many classic hits through the medium of the gong. I know I’d buy the album. Maybe more than other jokes, these conceptual musical segments have the sense of coming from Tim asking a question like, “wouldn’t it be funny if I did a greatest hits album, but on a gong?” The kind of questions you may pose as a facetious thought experiment, except he has the resources and comedic wherewithal to go through with it, and the results are glorious. Probably the best of these moments though follows the trend of pointless, meaningless silliness, where Tim “plays” a saxophone solo with a hollowed out, fishnetted mannequin leg. The image itself would’ve been hilarious enough, the music’s just a bonus. Admittedly the final song isn’t maybe the grand send off Tim was hoping for, as he sings us a list of, rather than his favourite things, simply “some of his things”, with predictably random results. While the concept is amusing, it’s more exhale through the nose worthy than hearty belly laugh worthy if you catch my drift. So the finale certainly could’ve had a bit more punch, but the rest of it’s been so strong I can forgive it to a degree, and the applause he receives is certainly deserved.

I do have one main quibble with the show in general though, and it becomes pretty obvious once the encore rolls around. Throughout the show, Tim had been sprinkling a few of his older “classic” jokes into the mix, such as the story of his military funk band, or the ditty about the chips and vinegar debate, and I’m not against that in concept. After all, he writes so many new jokes for a show anyway, if the older ones still get good reactions, why not chuck a few in? The thing is, the encore to my recollection was made up almost exclusively of old material. Sure, I admit, some of them are absolute stone cold classics. It was certainly a tick on my bucket list to witness ‘Pen Behind the Ear’ in person (to the point that I even whooped at its announcement), and they all got big laughs from the audience, but in my view it definitely wouldn’t have hurt to put some more substantial, newer setpieces in there so to speak to end things off properly, as great as the old stuff is, you know? Just to give it some more impact, that element of surprise.

Regardless though, I thoroughly enjoyed 'Breeeep!', perhaps even more than I thought I would. It showed Tim on top form, delivering an hour of big silliness and even bigger laughs. It shows us all the reasons why people love him, his weird, yet hugely creative mind on full display, and the larger than life, infectiously jolly persona to go with it. It’s a great viewing for returning fans, but also a fantastic entry show for people wanting to get into his uniquely ridiculous brand of comedy. Finally, while I wouldn’t call Tim a legacy act necessarily, especially more recently, he’s seemed a bit more content to go onstage and to some extent “play the hits” as it were. But to be fair, given the volume of laughs he’s still getting with them, along with the strength of his new material, I’m absolutely fine with that.