Micky Flanagan was worried, he says, that audiences might have moved on. Fair enough: it has been half a decade since he last graced the nation’s stages, when the man who defined the difference between going “out” and “out out” was arguably the UK’s most popular comedian. But time waits for no standup, least of all when the intervening period has seen him hit 60, and seen the context change in which old-school, cheeky chappy comedy might be delivered.
And yet, his worries are without substance, if the opening night of his Hammersmith run was any gauge. These were the last warm-up gigs before Flanagan’s tour proper starts next week, and they found the east Londoner in evergreen form, and rapturously received by a crowd that still adores him. Watching it, one could believe the market may even be growing for Flanagan’s brand of comedy, which looks at poncy modernity with the sceptical eye of one who grew up poor and without sentimentality in the middle of the previous century. These are confusing times, and there’s something reassuring about the solid certainties from a simpler age that Flanagan brings – or at least there is when delivered with Flanagan’s fundamental unseriousness and sense of fun.
The new show, If Ever We Needed It, seems even older-school than I’d expect from the comic, whose best material is smarter and more slippery than the geezer stylings suggest. But this is back-to-basics Mick, with lots of material on ’er indoors, the sitcom On the Buses, no less, and the idiocy of much modern living. The “smart meter” is contrasted with Flanagan’s dad’s no-nonsense method of dodging energy payments in the 1960s. Rimming is expertly mined for every shovelful of its obvious comic value, much as pegging was when last Flanagan took to the stage. Part of the fun of this routine is the contrast our host draws with the days of his youth, when a blowjob seemed like the most exotic of innovations.
If this all sounds blokey, well, that’s part of Flanagan’s appeal. Not for him any modern sheepishness about masculinity: that’s not what they taught you, I imagine, at Billingsgate fish market, where young Micky plied his trade. Flanagan doesn’t pretend to be anything he’s not, whether that’s an enfeebled husband mouthing swearwords behind his wife’s back, or a domestic busybody laminating the bin rota and hunting down the right items to fit the right tins. That authenticity is his ally as a comic – but equally, the refusal to rein himself in can lead to missteps. A routine tonight envying “the Arabian man”, not least for the supposed docility of his womanfolk, is a bit too 1960s for comfort.
Does this – and Flanagan’s other material on the so-called culture wars – mean we should bracket comeback-era Micky alongside Gervais and co, as another middle-aged megastar flaunting his anti-woke credentials? Not really. Flanagan lacks the ego to set himself up as a crusader for free speech, or anything else. Nor is he in the business of upsetting anyone: his detour into trans competitors in women’s swimming (“I was straight on the Ladbrokes app”) gracefully swerves wider debates about gender. And while some might take umbrage at routines waxing nostalgic about heavy breathers (so much more innocent, argues our host, than the sexual behaviours of our own era), Flanagan’s treatment is irresistibly comical and cynicism-free.
He’s breaking no new ground then, with this return after half a decade away. But Flanagan occupies his existing terrain with great authority, lightly worn. Performed this well, there’ll always be an audience for the unreconstructed comedy of marital grouches and hair-raising sex, “remember the good old days” and dismay at modernity. Far from moving on, audiences will likely flock back to Flanagan by the thousand.
Micky Flanagan is on tour until 2 June.
