Bird-based entertainment with mass appeal.
It’s Saturday daytime, and we’re in the top floor of a Brighton pub, just by a busy road on the outskirts of town. The room is packed. We’re here for the tit pics, and we’re greedy for more.
The gathering is for Guess the Weight of the Bird, an entertainment show devised by comedian John Thornton, in which audience members must guess the weight of birds for a chance to win chocolate eggs, gravitas, and possibly even £10,000.*
The premise of this show is so fun, and there’s bird facts aplenty to expand the mind. Who knew that geese have teeth on their tongues? There’s also obvious delight to be taken from the names of birds, with play and puns around big rumps and boobies explored with full-breasted abandon. The show is peppered with humorous titbits and fun facts, including an anecdote about Dr. Oetker that will devastate frozen pizza fans. So, what’s not to like?
Well, it’s time to address the elephant bird (which weighs a whopping 650kg) in the room. Guess the Weight of the Bird is a fantastic idea which has such mass appeal that the make-up of the audience seems a little confused. There are lads here for booby jokes, and bird nerds wanting a nature fix. One chap walks into the room forty minutes in, joining some slightly rowdy types in the front row. He seems so dazed that he could appear to be lost. Much to everyone’s astonishment, he gets his first guess spot on, winning the coveted prize of a chocolate egg. It may just be bad luck that there is such a mixed crowd in on this particular day. It creates a somewhat jarring atmosphere that takes the joyful edge off what could be a fun-filled hour of filthy finch facts.
The host takes this interlude in good humour, in fact, all the humour in this show is bang-on. The details are carefully considered. From passing bingo ball eggs around in a duck-shaped basket, to deducting points for ‘bad birds’ such as seagulls (the bane of every Brightonian’s existence).
Guess the Weight of the Bird obviously has mass appeal, the room is packed, but what is it trying to be? This reviewer would like to see a late-night edition for the lads closer to the centre of town – a ‘tits gone wild’ session, if you will. This would leave the daytime sessions for the binocular babes, those looking for something a bit more nerdy and birdy. Both sessions would be a hoot.
*The prize is a scratchcard.
Reviewed on 10 May.
