Gavin Webster: Bill Hicks Wasn't Very Good

When you give your show a title this provocative, you better show your working. Depending on your approach, your material, and yes, your guts, taking on one of comedy’s sacred cows sounds like either a brave or foolhardy thing to do. Sadly, Webster’s show appears to be neither.

Webster is a very capable stand-up, and some keenly observed material on the class system (covering some of the same ground as his show last year, 'All Young People Are C**ts') shows him to be an intelligent, knowledgeable man with a clear interest in history. Once he begins dealing with the titular subject of his show, however, it actually loses its focus and is too scattershot to effectively make any of the points he seems to want to. What anti-Hicks material there is is not as strong as it needs to be, and it is telling that the routines he reads from a biography retain their power and humour much more so than Webster’s own attempts to undermine them.

When the show does an about-face towards the end, one could argue that the strength of the original material is indeed the entire point, but the structure of Webster’s own show is never knowing enough for this to feel earned or intended. A missed opportunity.