Alan Davies: Think Ahead – Leeds Playhouse

Alan Davies is an English actor, presenter, stand-up comedian, and writer, best known for bringing a shambling, offbeat charm to the title role in the BBC mystery drama Jonathan Creek (1997–2016), and for his long-standing presence as the only permanent panellist on the BBC quiz show QI since its launch in 2003, outlasting even its original host Stephen Fry. It is easy, therefore, to approach his latest stand-up tour, Think Ahead, expecting genial observational comedy and whimsical anecdotes from a familiar television personality. What Davies delivers is something far braver, darker and ultimately more affecting, while still remaining unmistakably, disarmingly funny.

Davies began his career as a stand-up comic and has toured extensively over the decades, most recently in 2025. That long apprenticeship shows in every beat of this show. His timing, control of pace and instinctive rapport with the audience allow him to navigate material that, in less experienced hands, could be unwatchably grim. Instead, Think Ahead becomes a rare blend of confessional theatre, black comedy and traditional stand-up.

Central to the show are the deeply traumatic experiences Davies detailed in his 2020 memoir Just Ignore Him. The book, his second memoir and a work of autobiography, describes the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his father from the ages of eight to thirteen. Both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service accepted his account but declined to prosecute his father, Roy Davies, due to his Alzheimer’s disease and advanced age. For many performers, committing these experiences to the page would have been the final word; for Davies, they have become part of the ongoing conversation he is having with himself and his audience.

On stage, he does not shy away from the most disturbing aspects. He describes how the abuse took place and recounts the moment his stepmother discovered indecent images of young boys, including a photograph of a teenage boy’s naked bottom covered in semen. His book agent, he tells us, advised him to remove that image from the memoir – “so I saved it for my stand-up,” he explains, with a mordant glint that draws incredulous, guilty laughter. It is a perfectly judged line, encapsulating both the horror of the material and the audacity of Davies’ decision to present it in a comedy context.

Nor does Think Ahead confine itself to this single trauma. Davies also talks candidly about losing his mother when he was six, and about surviving cancer. These are subjects that most comics, even in the age of “sad-clown” confessional comedy, might treat with cautious euphemism. Davies is clear-eyed and specific. At one point, when he returns to the subject of abuse, there is a visible physical reaction: his breathing grows shallower, his chest tightens – a mild but unmistakable flash of PTSD that ripples across the room. You could hardly ask for a more immediate, embodied reminder of the lasting psychological damage inflicted on him.

This is, he acknowledges, the first time he has talked about these events on stage in such detail. For a performer who once thrived on universal observational humour and gentle absurdity, it is clearly a step outside his comfort zone. A self-confessed people-pleaser, Davies momentarily abandons any instinct to soften the blow. He allows the stunned silence to sit after particularly harrowing passages, resisting the urge to rescue the room straight away. Only then does he undercut the tension, noting just how profoundly unfunny this all is – and somehow, by stating the obvious with wry understatement, he begins to let the laughter back in.

The show’s emotional balance is crucial, and it is here that Davies’ lifetime of stand-up experience is most evident. The traumatising anecdotes are not presented in isolation; they are woven into a broader tapestry of his life, which still includes the quotidian irritations and minor absurdities that have always been his stock-in-trade. He moves between deeply personal disclosures and more traditional routines with impressive dexterity, using moments of levity to give the audience room to breathe without ever trivialising what has gone before.

There is, undeniably, something grimly funny in his descriptions of a man who amassed reams of photographs of teenage boys. Davies understands that the grotesque can tip into the absurd, and that audiences sometimes need that absurdity as a coping mechanism. His jokes in these sections function less as punchlines and more as pressure valves, carefully releasing tension while leaving the horror intact. It is a difficult equilibrium to maintain, and he manages it with intelligence and compassion – both for his younger self and for those listening who may recognise echoes of their own pain.

The evening is well supported by opener Alana Jackson, an up-and-coming comedian whose presence immediately lowers the average age of the room by a good couple of decades. Her material about growing up in Glasgow and negotiating young adulthood brings an energetic contrast to Davies’ reflective tone, and her dry, incisive style complements his more narrative-driven storytelling. She is an astute choice of support act: different enough to provide lightness and freshness, yet aligned closely enough in sensibility that the transition between sets feels natural rather than jarring.

What emerges over the course of Think Ahead is not simply a collection of routines, but an act of reclamation. By bringing the ugliest parts of his past into the harsh, exposing light of the comedy stage, Davies asserts control over them in a way that is both personally and politically resonant. It is important to him, clearly, to “get it out” – not in the sense of a therapeutic purge that expects sympathy from the crowd, but as a deliberate, considered act of testimony. His bravery lies not only in talking about the abuse, but in doing so night after night, knowing the toll it takes.

Yet he never allows the show to collapse entirely into solemnity. “I can still do a gig,” he reassures us early on, and he proves it repeatedly. The laughter is real, frequent and earned, whether he is skewering social awkwardness, recalling professional mishaps, or folding in the macabre details of his childhood with surprising, audacious wit. The formal craft – the call-backs, the deft phrasing, the careful modulation of tone – ensures that Think Ahead is not merely important, but consistently engaging as a piece of live comedy.

In the end, this is a quietly remarkable show: a testament to Davies’ resilience, his hard-won skill as a stand-up, and his determination to tell the full, uncomfortable truth of his own story. It is not an easy watch, nor should it be, but it is a compelling, humane and ultimately cathartic evening that lingers long after the final applause.

Reviewed on Thursday 1st October