INSIDE a big canvass tent on a dreary wet Sunday night in a Newcastle park might not seem like the most salubrious or inspiring time or place to watch comedy.

But the crowd watching Sean Lock's turn at this year's Newcastle Comedy Festival soon forgot their surroundings once the talented funnyman got into full flow.

Lock, without doubt one of the most inventive and funny comics on the circuit, treated the brave souls who had made it out to a brilliant and scatological monologue taking in everything from the Battle of Hastings to buying fruit in Senegal.

Lock's stand-up, though it occasionally flies close to the wind, is always redeemed by the comic's charming stage persona. He is the kind of bloke who'd insult you at a party but still manage to convince you it was all just a joke - which, of course, it is.

He rails against America, hilariously lampooning their obsession with size. He tells the audience that he went to a town in the US where there was a 30-foot high thermometer claiming to be the biggest in the world.

He explains that as the second-biggest thermometer in the world is probably just normal-sized, the US townsfolk were wasting their time a little building one bigger than a building. "Even a thermometer that was knee-high would have won by miles," he says, shrugging his shoulders.

Published: 06/10/2004