A welcome return to the Social Club for Germany’s comedy ambassador.
This is a trial of his new show, with song to match, which, of course he gets the audience to clap along to.
It doesn’t have anything to do with washing. As a ‘work in progress’ there’s some reliance on notes he can refer to, but being Henning, and a person of stated rigid Teutonic work ethic, plenty of progress has already been made.
He announces it as ‘an unbiased view of the Covid crisis’ which of course it also isn’t, as he comes out with endless outrageously biased comments on all aspects of the pandemic: the failures of Old Folks Homes (his terminology) and his strategies for dealing with them (hope Boris isn’t listening); how to mitigate the unpleasantness of the medical profession, and, worse, the dentistry profession; plus many ludicrous examples of what he says are the ‘advantages’ of a global pandemic.
All very naughty, and mostly hitting the audience’s funny bone with unerring accuracy – though perhaps his comment “I haven’t had the vaccine: I eat fruit” is not quite on the button – either he’s fibbing, and he is vaccinated, or it’s true and he isn’t; either way it’s not a very clever thing to say in these infected times. But that’s a quibble.
His grasp of how to put over his cod-serious German viewpoint on the foibles of UK society is as comedically effective as ever. The show will undoubtedly be a winner.
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Reviewer: John Christopher Wood
