Will success change Micky Flanagan? He tells us that now he’s playing big stages he’s got more room to do his Cockney walk: a swagger-cum-limp that’s mostly mockery, partly celebration. “You can take the boy out of Bethnal Green,” he says, “but you can’t take the Bethnal Green out of the boy.” He wouldn’t have much of an act if you could. What makes it so adorable is the deftness with which he zigzags between his working-class past and his middle-class present. He notes modern kids asking mum for tagliatelle carbonara; in the Seventies he’d be given a thick ear for daring to ask for alphabetti spaghetti. Flanagan is about neither chippiness nor happy-but-poor nostalgia. He can be proud and appalled by himself and the result is comedy that is celebratory and accessible, yet unsentimental.
His impoverished past gives him a personal angle from which to tackle material that, written down, might look generic. Spanish holidays, food faddism, fingering, delinquent teens, Seventies telly, health and safety, going out on the pull . . . haven’t we heard all this before? But the casual vigour of Flanagan’s delivery conceals precise, almost poetic turns of phrase. Everything is vivid. Bespoke. He’s your funniest friend on the form of his life.
Sometimes that leads him close to rabble-rousing. Flanagan is urbane but profane, skirting close to being too coarse. “Misogynist!” he says, mock- chastising the punchline to his Gok Wan routine. “Still not sure whether I’m allowed to do that, to be honest,” he says after giving us his Jewish voice.
Flanagan has lived a bit and doesn’t waste what he’s learnt. Grew up poor, left school at 15, became a fish porter like his “casual criminal” dad, went to America for a year until he got fed up with all the positivity, came back and did teacher training before finally becoming a comic in the late Nineties. He’s been doing some of this for years.
So when he does his routine about the difference between “popping out” and going “out out” it’s greeted like a hit single. He both acknowledges that and delivers it as though it were a fresh thought. And, at the end, he looks humbled by the reception. He’s a fine comedian and deserves that extra bit of swaggering space.
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Tour to June 1. mickyflanagan.com