The Big Show is a 100-minute extra­vag­anza with three UK comedi­ans who you may or may not have heard of. (The com­edy world is big, okay?) Des­pite my utter obli­vi­ous­ness to whom two out of three of them were, this three-act show was a whole lot of fun.

Ian Smith

Act­ing as our MC for the night, Ian Smith per­formed twice dur­ing the nearly two-hour long show. Ian’s per­form­ance was utterly, utterly bonkers, and thor­oughly enjoy­able. Tak­ing us through tales of vis­it­ing Waitomo, trav­el­ling to Nor­way and his weird neigh­bour with too many fanny packs, his per­form­ance was joy­ous and rife with ridicu­lous imagery. He seemed to have a severe dis­taste for broc­coli on toast, and hon­estly, I can’t blame him.

Phil Wang

Phil Wang’s par­ents met at a kung-fu class. That’s not even a joke, it’s true.

Incred­ibly artic­u­late, with a slight twinge of the pom­pous, Phil’s per­form­ance was the wild­card sand­wiched between two fairly low stakes acts. Touch­ing on slightly-unortho­dox dat­ing meth­ods, the per­ils of hav­ing a cer­tain last name in some parts of soci­ety, and the priv­ilege that women have because they’re allowed to love babies (not in a weird way), his act was unique and prob­ably slightly polar­ising to some. I look for­ward to see­ing more of his work in com­ing years.

Jimmy McGh­ie

Wellington’s audi­ences were out in full, mani­ac­al force when it came to the head­line act. Jimmy McGh­ie spent a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of his act fend­ing off heck­lers – from one who yelled that ‘South Lon­don was an oxy­mor­on’, to anoth­er who said that ‘zhoosh’ was their favour­ite word – and it turned the whole show into a bit of a shambles. An incred­ibly funny shambles – because it became obvi­ous that Jimmy had a fair amount of prac­tice in the ‘fend­ing off heck­lers’ area, and did so with much aplomb – but a shambles non­ethe­less.

Jimmy was an incred­ibly like­able, very verb­ose per­former with excel­lent turns of phrase. He was prob­ably an act more for a Gen Y audi­ence – as he asked how many mil­len­ni­als were in the audi­ence dur­ing the show and there was a grand total of six of us (before he star­ted resound­ingly mock­ing our cof­fee cul­ture) – but his anec­dotes about mil­len­ni­al par­ents and get­ting older were some­how still relat­able.

In all, this show was a great way to see old favour­ites, be intro­duced to new tal­ent, and watch three shows for only slightly more than the price of one. Get tick­ets quickly, because they’re nearly sold out!

The Big Show is run­ning at 8.30pm at Te Aua­ha in Wel­ling­ton from now until Sat­urday. Get amongst!