A partial review: The Twitter Comedy Club

Last night saw the first Twitter Comedy Gig and me, having bugger all else to do and wanting to keep up with all things technological and slightly interesting decided to watch it and write a fairly brief review of some of it…

I logged on to get the dreaded “Too many Tweets” message, which meant I had to keep refreshing the page until the server decided to could accommodate me. I managed to get online just as our host for the evening, Tiernan Douieb, was being introduced.

Now he was probably chosen to do the whole Arthur Smith thing because he’s quite a witty bloke in real life but those attributes simply didn’t transfer well via the medium of 140 character messages. The jokes were hugely unfunny and he became a complete bore towards the end when he resorted to awfully poor Twitter based puns. Ian Huntley probably could’ve done a better job. I was going to cut my losses there and then until he introduced the next ‘performer’, Matt Kirshen.

He promised so much at the start with a handful of funny one liners but eventually began to tell a nonsensical story about a Scientology museum he visited, which required several messages to set up and then another two or three for the punch line. Not only that but he was very, very slow. Suffice to say it killed his part of the gig and it was only the name of Rob Heeney, which I’d actually heard before, that kept me logged on.

Funnily enough Mr. Heeney was up next and he seemed to get the balance spot on - spend most of the gig throwing out one liner after one liner while occasionally bantering with those who had bothered to respond. Actually, that reminds me. One of the major flaws with this gig was that a lot of the people watching didn’t understand the instruction that using the hashtag would fuck the stream up, so continued to use the hashtag and consequently fucked the stream up. This meant you had to wade knee deep through inane, unfunny responses by wankers from all corners of the globe before you got to the actual joke. A real pain in the arse if, like me, you don’t much care for the opinions of randomers.

Heeney was followed by Carl Donnelly who, either in a fit of egotistical madness or sheer laziness, simply posted a YouTube video of one of his IRL (Ha. Look at me using all this interwebz lingo) performances. Reaction was mixed. Personally I thought the video was very funny and his solution was mildly inventive but others, mostly those who weren’t completely turned off by the gig after the first 40 minutes of cack, were quite annoyed.

The first half (and in my case the entire performance) was rounded off by Mitch Benn, whose Twitter reference filled Bohemian Rhapsody cover was bloody inventive but ultimately devoid of any big laughs, Stephen Fry reference aside.

I’d been on for over an hour and I decided that I could justify putting myself through anymore. I logged off. I like to think of it as a virtual flounce, turning on my heal and leaving before the show is over. On paper it was a decent idea but in practice it was painful to watch/read and I don’t think they’ll be doing another in a hurry. If you’re a comedian who can touch type and has a natural repartee you’ll be fine, if not you’ll look like a fool.