Micky Flanagan: If Ever We Needed It

The Hexagon, Reading Touring until June 1 ★★★★☆

After five years off, the first Cockney geezer of comedy is out on the road with a new show. But he’s not altogether pleased to be back. The selfconfessed ‘lazy b ****** ’ tells us he is happiest just loafing about the house watching rubbish telly and trying to avoid having to do anything for the missus.

In fact, at 61 he now finds stand-up so tiring that he tours in short bursts rather than gruelling 90-date slogs.

Flanagan casts himself as a man at odds with the modern world and, judging from the absence of twentysomethings in the audience, he’s not alone.

But, unlike Ricky Gervais, with whom he shares an interest in wokery and cancel culture, he is careful not to over-egg the provocation.

‘My dad was the first nonbinary person in the Seventies,’ he tells us… [Crowd goes slightly quiet.] ‘Cos my mum would only refer to him as “that” and “it”.’

Will the joke get him cancelled? Unlikely.

Whereas Gervais employs confrontation and division, Flanagan combines swagger, impudence and charm to (just about) pull it off. He is happy to speak up for the modern male, an unlikely defender of toxic masculinity and patriarchy. Thirty years of feminism has crushed us, he wails. ‘Sorry for inventing everything and building everything and maintaining everything for 10,000 years. You’re welcome, ladies. Enjoy your hot yoga!’

With him, unreconstructed blokeyness is alive and kicking – or, as he would have it, he’s proper oldschool – and you have to admire him for going out on a limb. He’s an oldfashioned gentleman at heart, lamenting the decline of civility. He may be a throwback (he’ll even do dodgy foreign accents) but he’s a dying breed in comedy. Enjoy Flanagan while he can still be bovva’d.