A couple of comedy highlights to start December

Kick off the festive season with some comedy with two of the finest comics around.

Fri Dec 5
Paul Foot at The Lowry
Stretches of Paul Foot's shows can involve him doddering around the stage, hesitant like someone with early stage dementia. Or balancing awkwardly on top of an embarrassed young man's lap whilst trying to feed him peas. Foot's general appearance is an equally unexpected sight, he sports a mullet any 70s footballer would be proud of and a flamboyantly flared suit to match. But that's Foot for you, cool, quirky, baffling and inherently funny. Often it's hard to put your finger on why he's so hilarious, he just is. He inhabits his own random world spouting nonsensical tales or going on chaotic rants and generally refusing to conform to the conventions of stand up. It used to be the case that he could gloriously split a room with his shenanigans but these days his shows are more likely to be filled with fans, or rather 'connoisseurs' (as he prefers to call them) of his oeuvre.

Sun Dec 7
Tommy Tiernan at The Lowry
Describing an Irish comedian as a skilled storyteller is something of a cliché but it's certainly one that applies to Tiernan.  A simple routine about how he ended up taking his son on a shopping trip in a Batman costume in Tiernan's hands becomes a magical musing on a child's imagination.
Hailing from the same town, Navan, as Dylan Moran, there must have been something in the water as both of them wound up winning the Perrier award at the Fringe in 1996 (Moran) and 1998 (Tiernan). It's Tiernan's willingness to look at the world from a new and more interesting perspective that makes him so special. His method of touring is pretty off kilter too - even though he's massive in his native Ireland and a big draw over here a few years ago he eschewed the posh hotels and went on tour in a Winnebago. It's that willingness to keep shaking things up that means he's not lost his touch in twenty years.

Words: Marissa Burgess