Comedy Review: Greg Davies at The William Aston Hall

Wednesday November 7th of November saw comedian Greg Davies bring his ‘The Back of My Mum’s Head’ tour to the William Aston Hall.

Unlike his fairly self explanatory ‘Firing Cheeseballs at a Dog’ tour, ‘The Back of My Mum’s Head’ requires a little explanation before the show begins. With the show largely based on his resentment of the youth and having to grow up, the name of the tour comes from the fact his mum would frequently say to him as a child ‘It’s not normal love’, before turning swiftly around and leaving the room.

Although it was his first stand up performance in the town, Davies is no stranger to Wrexham, with the comedian announcing in the show that his father and Nan used to live in the area. Greeting the audience as ‘Land of my Father’, Davies was clearly pleased to be performing in the town he spent so much time in as child. So much so, that he sent out a Tweet earlier on the day, asking for someone to buy him a Madness single and a big Tolberone because that’s what he had when he was in the town in 1983.

It would be unfair to not mention support act Ed Gamble, who readily addressed the annoyance people often feel when they realise a comic has a support act. He quickly removes all that though, and provides a hilarious warm up recounting tales of his obesity, River Island and an embarrassing medical operation he had to have.

To quote Davies, ‘Once a teacher, always a teacher’, the show begins with the comedian unveiling a flip chart of the subjects he intends to cover throughout the show, ranging from ‘Discrediting children’ and ‘Uncovering a racist’. Halfway through the show, Davies plays a series of soundscapes about the five best noises he’s ever heard. This involves the audience providing the Top of The Pops countdown music; which takes a while to get started, but eventually everyone is singing along to the old Top of the Pops music. Bizarre noises include passing wind on a Spanish man’s hand, and the noise his mum made when she accidentally went into his friends bedroom one night.

One of the most important points to mention is that Davies isn’t afraid to laugh at himself and is obviously enjoying the time he’s on stage; acting as though he’s telling the stories to his mate down the pub, and not to a few hundred people he’s never met. During a remix of his five favourite soundscapes (which involves a slow Jazz tune of the comedian passing wind on a Spanish man’s hand) Davies turned to the crowd and said that he’d recently read a very favourable review of his show, which mentioned that the soundscapes are involved in the show purely for the comedians own entertainment.

Davies’ storytelling abilities are the stand out point of the show; easily keeping the audience on their toes by steering them through the twists and turns of his not so normal life and his resentment of having to grow up. Whether it’s a story of his Stephen King style family holiday, in which they got followed through a forest in America by a blacked out van, or his tales of visiting Glastonbury festival as an adult; Davies sets the scene of the joke perfectly, before delivering another brilliant anecdote.

As the title of the show indicates, his mum is mentioned at regular points throughout the course of the evening. The stand out point being when two people are drawn from the audience to play his parents, as they act out a phone conversation he had with his mum about genitalia and dangerous fish which ends with a killer punch line.

The show ends with a hilarious song, and features the return of support act Ed Gamble dressed in something you really have to see to believe. Involving the audience in a song about a Bonsai tree, it really is quite a fitting ending to a bizarre but absolutely hilarious show.

Returning briefly onstage and promising no encore, Davies ended with saying he’d ‘had many happy memories in Wrexham, and was sure that this performance would be added to the list. As with “Firing Cheeseballs at a dog”, “The Back of My Mum’s Head” tour further cements Greg Davies as one of the country’s finest and funniest comedians.