On Friday we went to see Tim Minchin at High Wycombe Town Hall.

A couple of months ago when I was trying to buy tickets it seemed like every venue had only the very poor seats left, but Wycombe Town Hall was unreserved seating so I decided to take a gamble and just try to get there early. That really worked out well as we were almost the first there and chose to have third row seats rather than sit right at the front and risk being picked for audience participation!

Well, what an amazing night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a performer work so hard and despite seeing a few of his songs on YouTube I really didn’t appreciate just how good a singer and piano player he is until he was doing it in the same room as me. Incredibly funny, witty, erudite and intelligent, it was genius from start to finish. I suppose it helps that his “religion rants” contain some of the exact same words and arguments that I always end up using, just put into amusing song by someone with talent!

I think my favourite was a new (to me) number called Nine Minute Beat Poem, but even material like If I Didn’t Have You which I’ve heard a few times had new life breathed into it.

His audience interaction was good — yes there was a fair bit of picking people out for light mockery, so was glad to have chosen row three!

The only thing that slightly spoiled the evening was a couple of testosterone-fuelled teenage lads a few rows in front of us who kept heckling. They weren’t heckling because they were unsatisfied, it was more like “we love you Tim,” but as the night wore on they were shouting their own endings to his joke setups. Hello fuckwits, professional comedian on stage? I’ve paid to see him, not the chav chorus. He dealt with them fairly well but you could tell he was getting a little wound up by it.

All in all, highly recommended.