Chris Ramsey: Approval Needed review: let's hope his cha-cha-cha is as good as his ha-ha-ha
When Chris Ramsey was one of the first hoofing hopefuls announced for this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, many glitterball fans would have gone “Who?”. Well, here’s their chance to see the genial Geordie joker doing his day job before he foxtrots off to a dance studio.
Chris Ramsey: Approval Needed (Amazon Prime Video) is one of six new UK stand-up specials launching on the streaming service. Its arch nemesis Netflix has long had a raft of such gigs in its repertoire. Now Amazon is muscling in on the mic-wielding mirth action.
Filmed in front of a homecoming crowd at Newcastle’s Tyne Theatre, this film finds Ramsey emerging on-stage - wearing a snug-fitting floral shirt that wouldn’t look out of place in the BBC ballroom (just add deep teak spray tan) - and launching straight into some slightly unreconstructed marital material.
His horizons might be narrow, concentrating on domestic life with wife Rosie and their toddler son, but the 33-year-old skilfully spins such everyman observational material into engaging comedy. His is a world of nursery drop-offs and lost iPhone cables, watching Escape To The Chateau and shopping at “the big Tesco”. He’s a self-confessed worrier, so many of the problems he ponders are entirely in his own head.
Ramsey constructs a highly amusing routine about his love of David Beckham-branded underpants. Similarly with his hatred of caravan holidays and why he won’t eat chicken curry from the Chinese takeaway (don't be eating one while watching this segment). There’s an amusing anecdote about how Ramsey auditioned for a film role in War Horse as “lad from South Shields” and the reason he failed to get it.
His high-energy delivery uses cartoonish voices and physical clowning to bring his tall tales to vivid life: crawling on all-fours across the stage, miming a school assembly panic or convincingly imitating an angry seagull. Ramsey is a natural storyteller in the tradition of Billy Connolly and Peter Kay. He might not have that pair’s spark of genius but he’s cracking company for an hour.
The closest he comes to socio-political commentary is a routine about teaching children about LGBT issues - but that’s largely an excuse to reminisce about sex education lessons in his own youth.
Resembling Ant and Dec combined into one body, Ramsey has a verbal tic of saying “Eh?” at the end of sentences, which might irritate if he wasn’t so thoroughly likeable. His comedy might seem like blokey pub patter but it’s skilfully constructed and delivered in deceptive off-the-cuff style.
The result is life-affirming, laugh-along, exchange-knowing-looks-with- your-partner entertainment. Next stop Strictly. Let’s hope Ramsey’s cha-cha-cha is as good as his ha-ha-ha.