Dave Hughes – Pointless
Festivals
Quitting a top-rating radio show and successful TV gig to make a living out of stand-up comedy may sound a bit nuts – but not if you’re Dave Hughes.
Hughesy is a funny bloke. A helluva funny bloke. So funny, in fact, that the laughter never stops during his hour-long Adelaide Fringe show Pointless in the Umbrella Revolution at the Garden of Unearthly Delights.
Good on him.
Good on us.
With that goofy grin, larrikin humour and ability to see the funny side of the most mundane of daily routines, Hughesy is the kind of comedian who has the audience on his side from the get-go. There may be the occasional call for interaction, but it takes the form of gentle questioning and probing rather than the reverse heckling which often sees people avoiding the front rows and slouching ever further into their seats.
From tales of sliced bread, shopping, speeding fines and Twitter, to jokes about cyclist Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace and custard meltdowns on My Kitchen Rules, Hughes segues smoothly between a wide range of topics in his first Adelaide Fringe show in five years.
There are cracks about Salisbury (despite the fact he discovered the Mayor was in his opening-night audience), hipsters, anklets and pubic hair; stories about his relationship, pets, kids and – eek – childbirth.
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Pointless does come with a language warning and an ages 15+ recommendation, and some of the anecdotes sail close to the wind, but it’s not (in my view at least) offensive.
Dave Hughes is one of those comedians who tends to polarise people – I was a latecomer to the fan club, but there’s something endearing about his candid and quintessentially Ocker humour that won me over.
Still, I did wonder if an hour-long show might be just a bit, well, too much Hughesy. The fact that my face hurt from laughing as we exited the Umbrella Revolution was proof it wasn’t.
Having resigned from Channel 10’s The Project and quit his job co-hosting the Nova 100 breakfast show, Hughes has declared that 2014 will be all about stand-up, with Adelaide Fringe the start of national tour.
Good on you, Hughesy.
Dave Hughes – Pointless is in the Umbrella Revolution, Garden of Unearthly Delights, until March 16.
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