Paul Foot: Kenny Larch is Dead

For many years a fixture on the comedy circuit, Paul Foot has endured something of a marginalized presence. Standing by his surrealism in the days before the success of Stewart Lee expanded the market for alternative comedy in the UK and provided the antidote to Michael McIntyre-style easily digestible observational humour.

Indeed, because Foot’s particular approach to standup stands resolutely in the world of the surreal, he has often been dismissed as alienating. But this year’s offering, Kenny Larch is Dead, is a consistently brilliant and truly accomplished example of his finely-honed skill, not to mention a joyously refreshing departure from the TV-ready comedy that Edinburgh audiences are drowning in this year.

In typically esoteric fashion, Foot offers up musings on topics as wildly diverse as a cheddar collection and lesbian salmon via an inspired imagining of actress Sue Johnston bouncing around on a trampoline. But this table of contents doesn’t do justice to the mastery at work here; Foot’s delivery and mannerisms are sometimes wild, sometimes more subtle, but always expertly controlled and utterly hilarious.

Indeed, the great skill of Paul Foot is that, whether he is fumbling to open a bag to find a note confirming his absurd punch lines or screaming ferociously in the face of an audience member, there’s a sense of subtly constructed synchronicity, finding laughter in every inch of the material.

There are not-so-subtle suggestions in Kenny Larch is Dead that Foot is well aware of his reputation for inhabiting the most extreme alternative end of the spectrum. At one point he wryly proclaims: “I know how to play the game” and proceeds to placate his supposedly disappointed managers with a segment on supermarket anagrams. Of course, with the Paul Foot treatment it’s a showstopper, but it's also a slap in the face for those who might argue that taking the less-travelled route in looking for a laugh is in some way inferior.

The finale sees him comfortably push the boundaries of the form further, abandoning whole sentences altogether and merely saying individual words. Foot’s control of intonation and cadence is masterful, the tone and pitch of his voice providing the laughs. There is nothing random about Foot’s surrealism; it is studied and controlled. It is, frankly, sublime.