Ben Elton

Watched Ben Elton at his standup gig "Get a Grip" at the Aotea center in Auckland last night.  Absolutely brilliant and extremely funny, Elton managed to cover every topic from politics, health, beauty obsession, conspiracy theories, through to consumerism.  As he put it at the start it was all about linking the size of his Mars Bar with Newtons 3rd law of physics (the equal reaction one for those too lazy to google it :D )

He really was at his exuberant, cutting best - doing extremely well to toe the line quite firmly on a number of what could be quite touchy issues, cutting deep enough to make people think, but I would deem not actually offending many people.  Of course his humour isn't for everyone (most popularly known via Blackadder 2+, Bottom, The Young Ones etc), especially given its real bite (not actually shown through the aforementioned series).  His stand-up definitely reminds more of his books - in this case mostly his earlier books of Stark, This Other Eden and Gridlock.

One of the fascinating aspects of his performance was the ease with which he localized the majority of his performance - The Warehouse, Air New Zealand, the descent into Wellington airport, Freedom Furniture, etc all became the examples within his performance without hesitation.  He was even able to preface the section about Iraq with appropriate sentiments about how NZ did not go and still managed to make the section entirely relevant - despite NZ only comprising 4 shows on his tour and being the only country with that stance on Iraq.

Absolutly worth going to see - sorry to all you Kiwi's who have now missed out unless you dash to Australia quickly (but hey, 600 of you were already planning to go this week anyway ;-> ). To anyone else who still has the chance to catch him on his tour, I unconditionally recommend you to go.
Tags: BenElton, humour