Two years ago, a boyish, baby-faced Australian ordered me and several thousand other people to judge a varied selection of toes. Nice, clean, groomed ones and we were to chant: “Aaah!” Stubby, hairy, bunioned, wonky, dry or otherwise freaky ones: “Booo!”
Given the rest of this stand-up hour had ranged from incredulous observations about wet families in hotel lifts on their way back from the pool, a treatise on the “lumps” on the floor of the London Underground, and some cartoon grotesques, a PowerPoint presentation about toes wasn’t especially disturbing. But then he took a look at an audience member’s toes and found one so pleasing, “I wish I had a second ar*ehole”.
Welcome to the mind of Sam Campbell. To many he is the funniest comic in the UK right now, and to many more he is certainly the weirdest. His stand-up, full of apoplectic outbursts, is absurd, incongruous, sometimes depraved, and regularly bat sh*t. His star-making appearances everywhere else – Taskmaster, Would I Lie to You?, Last One Laughing – are meandering and surreal, full of one-liners, quick-witted wordplay, and anecdotes about pigeon-chested characters from primary school.
He is just very, very funny – especially because of his unflappable delivery and his malleable face, much of the time contorted in concern, the rest of it blank and bewildered. He very nearly won this year’s Last One Laughing because of his deadpan gift – and because he dressed up as a vicar’s pet bird, said he ate next to “mole people” during Eat Out to Help Out, and claimed he’d been asked to host “Junior Naked Attraction”.
