Jeff Leach: A Leach On Society

Jeff Leach certainly doesn’t lack in confidence. Taking to the stage wearing nothing but socks and a sandwich board, he spends much of the first five minutes flashing his most intimate body parts.

Thus begins an often excruciating hour which sees the sometime television presenter relive the most embarrassing moments of his life in a baffling attempt to seek some redemption.

No bodily fluid or human waste product is left unspurted in this often puerile and always prurient performance.

Leach seems to have a real issue with being middle-class, white and privately educated, arguing that it makes him unlikeable despite the fact that this would probably place him slap-bang in the middle of a standup venn diagram. “You’d like me more if I was black, gay or in a wheelchair,” he bleats.

He insists more than once that he doesn’t want to be a “vacuous bellend on television any more” but displays no real contrition for his perceived failures.

A finale which initially seems shocking and daring turns out to be nothing more than a psuedo-spiritual justification for what has gone before. 

He is charismatic, though, and there is—as he alludes to—a similarity to Russell Brand in presentation, if not in material or timing.

Having said that, his audience—most of whom appeared to be aged around 16—seemed to lap up every ounce of filth. He’ll probably be married to a popstar and starring in ill-considered Hollywood remakes within a year.