Award winning Scottish comedian , TV presenter, Radio DJ and man of many talents, brought his fast talking very Scottish comedy tour to Dumfries last Friday as part of the wonderful Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival. Team DGWGO were invited along to see what we thought.
Myself and LC went along, we have only seen a couple of stand up comedy acts between us in our entire lifetimes, so we really were novices at this kind of event, but with it being held in the Cairndale in Dumfries it had a really intimate and comfortable feeling and this helped set the tone for what was to turn out to be a relaxed and extremely funny evening.
Des came onto the stage and had the crowd laughing from the very first minute, voicing his opinion of the venue, Dumfries and his journey down the road in his trademark million mile an hour style,this was only just a small warm up though , As Des introduced his friend who he described as “The Best Act to emerge from Scotland in Years”, his support act the larger than life ‘Scott Gibson‘ 21 stone of pure Glasgow wit, hitting the crowd with his dark and sometimes filthy views and anecdotes. Although not necessarily my personal type of humor all they way through his set, he did cover some very true points in life, from the 5p bag tax to what to do when the dog poops in the house. When people weren’t squirming on their seats at his story about Coco Pops Scott had control of the room and the audience in stitches during his half hour on stage.
After a short intermission the brilliant Des Clarke came back on stage, instantly putting the room into hysterics with his stories and rapid speaking Glasgow banter. Des was telling the room his life story, right from childhood experiences growing up in Finnieston, through to more recent stories and a very awkward conversation he had with HRH Prince Charles. Although Des describes himself as a bag of nerves, he had the room feeling relaxed and talked to us all as if we were his mates in the pub. His humor is very Scottish, but his true life stories would have anybody from any walk of life thinking and laughing to themselves ‘I Know someone like that’ .
We loved the show from start to end, and left the Cairndale feeling uplifted, chatting to each other and still giglling all the way home about the jokes and stories we had heard. I must congratulate the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival for bringing such top notch entertainment to our doorstep, this is an event that is going from strength to strength, and as Des said himself in his warm up spot ‘ Comedy is Art ‘ and my goodness Des Clarke knows how to paint an hysterical picture.
Written exclusively for DGWGO by R.B
