By Emma Greensill
The Scottish Comedian of the year 2013, Larry Dean, delivers a hilarious and sincere set at The Comedy Store in Manchester. Following a brilliant set from Canadian comedian Pete Johansson and a fantastic night of compéring from Andrew Ryan, Larry Dean enters the stage to a rapturous round of applause, the crowd eager to experience his award-winning comedy.
Larry started his set by talking about his hometown of Glasgow by informing the audience that his mum is posh and his dad is working class. He used different voices to set them apart and explained how his mum essentially sounds like a whale in contrast to his dad who is extremely Glaswegian. There’s also a running theme that he likes to follow at the beginning of each set which is to tell a few jokes about the place the gig is at.
Dean speaks during his set about his sexuality, talking early on in his set about how he went through a tough breakup before revealing later on in the set how the person he broke up with was a man. He then goes on to talk about how people are normally shocked by this revolution as they think he does not sound like he’s gay. Using his penchant for different voices he then puts on a typical camp voice to poke fun at how society has a predefined idea of how a gay man should act and sound. He then tackles homophobia in his set through his cutting analysis of the idea of Grindr and how, seeing how far away another gay man is, away would be more suited to a homophobe so they could avoid any gay people. This joke also highlights another part of Grindr’s problem, why would anyone of any sexuality need to know exactly how far away someone who might want to have sex with them is in feet? This is just one example of how Larry Dean can make you laugh out loud and pause to think about how absurd life can be.
The central joke of the whole set was about a trip Larry took to Dubai as he was doing a show there. He started the story pretty much at the start of his show and he didn’t finish it until his final words of the set. Dean’s style of comedy is creative in a way that he sticks to one main joke and stems off onto many other jokes that allow him to tell it.
One of the things that stood out was when he described himself as a homophobic homosexual, which was ultimately what his Dubai joke was about as he talked about how being gay is illegal there, and how the remedy to homosexuality is to ‘pray the gay away’. He went on to say that the only person that could come up with that saying must be gay which made the audience explode with laughter.
Larry Dean is a talented comedian who knows what the audience wants and adapts it well to the individual destinations of his shows.
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