The route from the classroom to the comedy stage is well travelled, and ex-maths teacher Tom Towelling makes it the thread of his show here, conducting his audience like so many recalcitrant pupils under his charge. In case that sounds triggering, never fear: this debut show is unlike any other schoolroom you’ve been in. Towelling is one of several oddball comics elevated to the best newcomer shortlist for this year’s Edinburgh comedy awards, and his show is a noodly, mellow collage of sketch, song and educational back-and-forth with the crowd.
Let’s get the title – Tom Towelling Teaches You to Knit – out of the way early. When audience members play ball with this or that bit of interaction, the Birmingham man rewards them by binding them together loosely with wool. As the show progresses, a cat’s cradle unspools, towards – well, nothing in particular.
The idea goes undeveloped. That’s not the only instance here when you feel you’re on the receiving end of quirkiness for quirkiness’s sake – see his song about favourite motorways, or a fairly cheap closing routine revealing his supposed life ambition. At the performance I saw, that latter skit was memorably interrupted by an invader from the courtyard outside, demanding to see his 12-inch penis.
Hilarity ensued – and Towelling can take some credit for the chaos, having set that process in motion when he expelled an audience member for requesting to hear his supposed “forbidden joke”, one that would ruin the show. Harness that level of unpredictability to his act and he really could be in business. In the meantime, he’s got a gently cocooning hour of low-level eccentricity, Rob Auton-like in its dreaminess, which features an amusing PowerPoint on the parabolic hairlines of his various uncles, an act-out of the pep talk he’d love to give to the England football team, and an impromptu maths test with his crowd.
A winner last year of Channel 4’s Sean Lock award for comic invention, Towelling showcases that quality here, even if inventive parts are yet to knit together into a satisfying whole.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
