The weekend got off to a good start with a couple of trips to Brighton on Friday.   First Jayne and went down for a look around and to do some shopping, which also involved a delicious full English breakfast.   After taking her and her goodies home I went back with the kids to see Richard Herring at Komedia.On the way back to the car in the afternoon we were looking at St. Bartholomews church and I realised that I haven’t been past it while it was open.  It is such an immense building I have often wondered what it would be like inside and so we went in for a look.  It turns out to be equally immense inside.  In many ways it is a ridiculous building which would have been just as practical if it was half the height or less, but I have a soft spot for things built on a ridiculous scale.

Apparently it is the tallest parish church in Britain and possibly in Europe.  From the outside it is a very austere building with a rectangular footprint and no spire or tower.  The pitched roof is the only thing stopping it from being a giant box.  In some ways it reminds me of St. Swithuns in Hither Green, which I used to live opposite, but on a much larger scale – both are C of E churches but very ‘high church’ with masses and confession boxes.

All of which put me in the right frame of mind for the evening – Christ on a Bike at the Komedia, which is the show Richard Herring touring this year.

The show is a re-working of his 2001 show.  I like Herring and share his atheistic views so I knew I was going to enjoy it, though I can understand how and why some people wouldn’t.  The show has two major set pieces.  In the first half is a critique of the ten commandments, and in the second half is the tour de force which is a demolition of the first page of the bok of Matthew, wherein Herring recites the entire list of ‘begats’ in that gospel only to finish by demonstrating the irrelevence of it.

I had seen that routine before on Youtube and when he did it at the Lyric during one of the Sunday comedy nights but it is still funny and impressive.

Those highlights and a few lesser set pieces are bookended by a conceit about a fantasy cycle race between Herring and Jesus, which is where the show has more plot than laughs and probably loses more non-fans.I suspect that is why Chrystal was less than impressed by the evening.  I think she prefers more straightforward comedy like we went to before.

Frankie was like a pig in shit though.  He loved it and was dead chuffed to get his programme signed afterwards.  What I didn’t know was that, after I gave him a DVD of Herring’s Hitler Moustache show at christmas, he emailed him about something or other and got a reply.   I keep meaning to get around to writing something about people who ‘get’ the internet rather than just use it because they think you have to and Richard Herring is one of the top examples I had been thinking of – this just reinforces that view.

The Komedia is a strange place though.  I have been there three times now and each time it was in a different room.  The first time was to see the mighty Jerry Sadowitz who was performing in the downstairs bar at the back.  The second time was for a regular comedy evening and that was in a much larger room downstairs which I thought was the proper room.  This time round we were upstairs in an even bigger room – well one with a higher ceiling anyway.

I assume I’ve seen it all now but part of me wouldn’t be surprised to find that, if I went again, there turned out to be yet another performance space in there.  I was a bit relieved to see the size of the room we were in actually.  I had seen adverts for music at the Komedia – Metallica tribute bands, Steve Hackett, and so on, and was having trouble imagining them playin in the basement room with a one-foot high stage and hardly any headroom.

To top it all off nicely, we found that the Gourmet Burger Kitchen was still open after the show, so we filled our faces before going home.   I messed with the kids’ heads a bit by ordering the chicken satay burger without the bun.