This Glasgow date of Nick Helm’s latest show, No One Gets Out Alive, took a distressingly literal turn when it halted abruptly two-thirds of the way through due to a medical emergency in the audience. With the arrival of an ambulance delayed by more than an hour, presumably because the show took place on Bonfire Night, most of the crowd had to leave before it resumed.
Gamely though, Helm belatedly finished the show at the venue’s bar for those who stuck around. No longer able to grandstand quite so brashly, as he performed without a microphone for most of this section, the adversity and intimacy suited his heart-on-sleeve vulnerability and wounded bellowing, with full credit to him that he assumed control and even flourished in the circumstances.
Still, it was an exceptionally tough break for a comic who’s endured quite a few in recent times. Continuing to be defined by his breakthrough screen role in the sitcom Uncle, he lays bare his mental health struggles since the BBC show, the childhood bullying that aggravated his lifelong body issues and eating disorder, and the ongoing peaks and troughs of his career.
He bristles with scornful belligerence, admonishing and intimidating the front rows, bemoaning what he perceives as the crowd’s lack of appreciation. Imitating the swagger of his rock god icons, his opening song, Dump The Motherfucker, is characteristically blood and thunderous, helping to bulldoze everyone into submission.
Often, he’s openly hurting and even plaintive. Disclosing the recent end of his relationship, his bruised and battered sense of himself justifies and fuels the bombast.
There are mixed recollections of his upbringing around London and St Albans; reflections on his on-off relationship with Channel 4 and an extended account of the wretched, behind-the-scenes development of his food series Eat Your Heart Out for the Dave channel.
Candid and playful, blending incredulity and snarling despair at the hand that fate has so often dealt him, some of these tales, such as his engagements with successive personal trainers, have a tendency to the rambling.
Never in danger of being called coy, Helm’s bipolar diagnosis and the various medications he’s been through have gifted him a devil-may-care openness in discussing his depression and accompanying setbacks with ready, robust looseness.
Yet he can still be punchy. Glistening in sweatbands and hot pants, his visceral routine about a sex toy really goes in hard and tests the audience’s sensitivities. And his account of holidaying in the Algarve with his mother – one of the bits delivered from the bar – is a beautifully deft expression of love and frustration, punctuated with explosive outbursts and disbelieving recrimination.
As ever, the songs power the evening, though they’re perhaps a straighter setlist than in recent shows, with fewer obvious plays for laughs. Sunny Day Song captures his fragile, resurgent optimism, while Nosferatu never quite ascends to the anthemic majesty it threatens.
Nevertheless, his finale, Down On The Devil, is another blast of depraved sexuality, a furiously funny, Faustian plea for one more shot in the spotlight.
An emotional rollercoaster of a show then, an uneven experience that Helm couldn’t hope to fully control, but which he nevertheless did an impressive job of riding.
Tours until 29 November 2025 | Image: Paul Gilbey
Furiously funny
