Rhod Gilbert: still angry. This time it's potatoes.

St David’s Hall, Cardiff.

Mon 26 July

words: Angharad Brown

In conclusion to this year’s successful Cardiff Comedy Festival, several big name acts including Lucy Porter and Craig Campbell took to the stage at St David’s Hall in the festival’s Grand Gala Finale, with Rhod Gilbert compering and using the time to test out new material. The night was also to showcase the winner of the first ever Welsh Unsigned Stand-up Award (WUSA), Taylor Glenn.

It was an eclectic crowd of young and old but with a surprising amount of 40-something ladies with bad laughs and an especially annoying young imp wearing a turquoise cardigan (matching shoes) and white jeans who insisted on skipping at every feasible opportunity and singing loudly to Dolly Parton’s 9 To 5. There’s no reason why his actions should’ve incensed me, but they managed to get me into a mood that is probably best compared to one of Rhod Gilbert’s famous rants about hoovers, or suitcases, or washing machines. Rants touched on as he opened the evening’s entertainment. After Rhod had warmed up the audience by playing us like a set of drums, something he’s wanted to do every time he’s played St David’s Hall, on came his Cardiff flat mate and good friend Chris Corcoran. Now I’m not the biggest Chris Corcoran fan as I can find his stuff a bit clichéd, so I can’t say I was looking forward to his set, but I was actually pleasantly surprised.

Next up was Elis James from Carmarthen: a comedian I’ve been hearing a lot about, especially after his recent performance at The Junket Club. And he definitely lived up to the hype, telling tales on his time as a warm-up on Deal Or No Deal and an unfortunate incident with a group of 10-year-olds in a swimming pool. Following him was Matt Price from Cornwall, who told the audience about a recent gig at Broodmoor, which went so badly an inmate heckled him, encouraging the notorious cannibal Peter Bryan to “eat him�. A heavily pregnant Lucy Porter, despite being “about to blow� (according to Gilbert), brought an end to a long, but very funny, first half.

The second half began with Rhod testing out some new material, which followed on from his The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst show, by him reading out entries from his anger management diary. This time he’s incensed by jacket potatoes and how the Tesco on Cowbridge Road only sold them in packs of two firmly held in cellophane – “so they don’t turn the wrong way round,� according to the store manager. This was followed with ‘shit town bingo’ which Merthyr promptly won. A hard act to follow, Lloyd Langford came on and received some poor heckles from a man with ‘smell my cheese’ written on his t-shirt and a woman old enough to know better. But Langford proved to be a comedian who deserves to gain in popularity this year.

Taylor Glenn the WUSA competition winner got a mixed reaction with her comments regarding Facebook, stories of masturbating to the thought of Moonpig and a rap about moving to Cardiff from London. Rapping was probably the last thing I imagined her to do and I kind of wish she hadn’t, but her high level of confidence in front of a nearly full St David’s Hall was amazing. Finally we had Craig Campbell: a Canadian with a potty-mouth that made me (a girl from Portsmouth) blush, but he is bloody funny and I’m already thinking about booking to see him in the same venue early next year.

Overall the evening was a fitting way to conclude the 10-day event that promises to put Cardiff on the comedy map; I can only see it going from strength to strength in years to come.