Is this a record for the longest comedy tour, albeit with a pandemic-shaped gap in the middle? Camp legend Julian Clary started his Born To Mince jaunt in spring 2019. Since then he has written children’s books in lockdown, performed in panto at the Palladium and in The Dresser with Matthew Kelly. Now he is back with his first love. Turning the air blue with bawdy humour.
Perhaps he has been bottling up his urge to shock. Somehow even everyday words suddenly sound borderline obscene when Clary delivers them. Moist. Dryness. Entrance. Succour. IT consultant. His “volcano of filth” erupted so vigorously one began to spot vulgarity where none was even intended. This is adult comedy that makes you giggle like a child.
There is not much theme to Born To Mince. Clary, looking pretty well-preserved for 62, was joined initially by two skimpily clad dancers and occasionally breaks into song, but mostly the show consists of smutty stories and entertaining crowdwork that largely involves withering putdowns and offering fans a bag of cheesy balls.
The strongest scripted segment saw him recall a bout of discomfort during Covid, a “sinister throbbing” which turned out to be an anal fissure. Karma, maybe, for the notoriously crude crack about the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont at the 1993 British Comedy Awards that saw Clary make the front pages but lose career momentum.
A joke about putting a biodegradable condom to good use displayed an imaginative streak, while some routines were downright strange. One involved him talking about checking out other comics such as Simon Amstell and Stewart Lee which seemed devoid of a decent punchline. If it was an attempt to show that he had his finger on the stand-up pulse it did not work.
Clary was on a surer comic footing bitching about John Barrowman, gossiping about his Kent neighbour Paul O’Grady and describing helping Christopher Biggins remove his socks. He hit a surreal sweet spot with a yarn imagining Rylan and Helen Mirren working at a secret holiday resort.
The bulk of the second half involved a game show based around “Heterosexual Conversion Therapy” in which Clary hauled straight men out of the audience and set out to “revoke the bloke” through some rather corny rounds involving mock scientific props and judicious use of the word “helmet”.
It was essentially an excuse for more ribald ribbing and played very much to Clary’s ad libbing strengths. Who knows. If it had not been for that remark at the British Comedy Awards maybe he would have been hosting game shows like this on primetime for the last two decades. Like this, but much, much cleaner.
