The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Chris Ramsey
Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline, July 14
“I’m sitting in a Nando’s with my family,” says comedian Chris Ramsey in the lastminute email he managed to send before this piece was written.
“Waiting for our food and attempting to stop my toddler son from throwing his toy aeroplanes all over the place.”
That he’s being harassed once more by his son doesn’t come as much surprise, because Ramsey is, after all, a comedian who wrote a piece about the reign of terror the boy held over the Ramsey household when he was just one.
It’s a piece that can be sampled by searching for videos of Ramsey’s stand-up online - he delivered it while presenting Comedy Central UK’s Stand Up Central show, a gig he inherited from Russell Howard when the latter became too busy.
It’s the kind of sketch that Ramsey – who grew up in South Shields, Tyne and Wear, and retains the accent – excels in.
A comedian for more than a decade, he earned an Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination for his 2011 show Offermation, which defined its title as useless information passed on whether you want to hear it or not.
Over the years he’s developed an intuitive observational style, which takes everyday subjects like his son or his partner and blows them up through his sheer sense of amusing incredulity at the stories he’s relating.
Yet his new show, The Just Happy to Get Out of the House Tour, is apparently not so light in subject matter.
“It’s about death, believe it or not,” says Ramsey over his chicken.
“I had to do a will recently and the whole show is based on that.”
So is the thought of death what’s getting him out of the house?
“It’s not actually me that wants to get out of the house,” he says.
“My wife wants me gone! She says I’m a nightmare to be around when I haven’t done stand-up for a long time so that’s why this is my biggest tour yet.
“It gets better every show,” he says. “I think on my feet a lot and add stuff all the time so the last tour date will be the best one, I reckon. The only slog has been the venues without air conditioning...”
It’s been a huge jaunt around the country for Ramsey, taking in roughly 110 dates including a huge (almost) homecoming show at the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle, while ANGUSalive’s ability to draw a comedian of his profile to Arbroath is a sign of its increasing ambition in booking high-profile acts.
As for Ramsey, can he see his way past the tour to his next project?
“Just more of this,” he says, referring to the tour.
“This is me until December, then I’m going to actually stay in the house for a while.”