Puppet comedy at its finest

Along with Papa CJ, the well-known stand-up comedian who has already performed several times here, the City’s comedy buffs were treated to a wonderful and unusual evening’s entertainment at Kyra. Normally considered an old-fashioned and tired genre, Paul took ventriloquism to a whole new level infusing it with irreverent humour and plenty of audience interaction, a wide range of accents and the ability to switch between characters and his own voice without being caught.

First on was Papa CJ with a short warm up act breaking the ice and softening the gathering up for Paul and his puppets to take centre stage. Papa CJ did his thing like he always does, blending desi lingo and topical humour with a touch of profanity and audience heckling.

He then introduced Paul and his act, appropriately called Sponge Fest. Paul's act was simply superb. Barely a quiver was visible as he introduced the audience to two completely different character puppets, a bratty pre-adolescent Sam, and a doddering, old codger Albert with a hearing and incontinence problem and a glad eye for the ladies.

With his impeccable comic timing and steady stream of puppet-to-audience interaction, he kept the crowd rocking through the whole performance. Like most comedy acts, a couple of members from the audience are always chosen to be the fall guys for the evening. While one was poked fun at regular intervals, the other was invited on stage, a fake mouth strapped on, turned into a human puppet with Paul then taking over his voice and announcing to the audience that he’s actually gay and is coming out of the closet in the presence of his fiance.

Paul also recounted hilarious anecdotes from everyday life where his ventriloquist skills come into play like in an elevator or when startling a passing pregnant lady into believing that her baby is actually saying “let me out mummy!” With both the technical and comic aspects of his act so outstanding, Zerdin is definitely a performer to catch if you can when he is in the City next!