We didn't quite know what to expect from a set with John Hegley (billed as a comedian, poet, musician, songwriter and unpredictable genius) - and we weren't disappointed. John's material is sublimely ridiculous, and yet endearing, funny and warm. Adopting the air of a slightly weary schoolmaster, John played, sang, recited his poetry and somehow persuaded the audience - in groups, and rather amazingly, singly - to do the same. We sang the choruses to a couple of his songs arranged in two teams, and then a rather brave and patient man in the row in front of us was prevailed upon firstly to translate (from French into English) a section from The Adventures of Monsieur Robinet, John's peculiarly charming dual-language little book, and then to read out another section in French while John read out the English. It doesn't sound like much, but reality was somehow suspended for 45 minutes while we basked in the benign, humorous but surreal Hegley-verse. The piece de resistance was The Alphabet of Animals (unpublished as yet), a collection of silly alphabet songs. Suffice it to say that A was for amoeba, and G was for guillemot (complete with audience arm-flapping in imitation of that lovely bird).
John Hegley is half French and made much use of that fact in his show. But the performance was very soothingly British - just that combination of harmless silliness, irony and smiling goodwill that this country does so well sometimes.
SB
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