It was dark as I drove the point home

Three Coles attended an evening of musical comedy last Thursday. The nearby spa town, Cheltenham, hosted a fellow called Tim Minchin. The kids love him. The Antipodean chap has a rock star look and aspect and he delivers witty, pithy, occasionally angry songs which he accompanies on pianoforte or guitar. A decent proportion of his act consists of stand-up repartee and even some poetry. The audience were lapping it all up and rendered acclaim and near adoration at the end of the show. Alas, my reaction proved muted in comparison. At comedy nights I like to receive a decent number of figurative bangs for my, er, metaphorical buck and, although I nodded wistfully at times (I appreciated and shared his views on religion in particular), I merely chortled out loud on a humble brace of occasions. Minchin’s charm and image are a bit too studied for my taste, his targets too easy, his audience’s leanings and world view too simple to gauge and feed. Ultimately, cynically heaping scorn on spiritual matters, ill thought out superstition or our leaders’ political failings equated to shooting fish in a barrel. There’s no doubting Minchin’s popularity and I’m sure that if I was sixteen and three quarters, I’d have been lapping it up. But I have seen better and have been more challenged and I'm forty-three and three quarters. File under ‘Talented but a tad obvious’.