Review: Brilliant from Chris McCausland at Chichester Festival Theatre

Chris McCausland’s appearances on Have I Got News For You always leave you wondering what it would be like to spend an evening in his company. Chichester Festival Theatre provided the answer, and the answer is brilliant.

He’s got the most engaging delivery, never over-polished, and his telling of stories is masterful, from the sad fact that the two most frequent words on his school reports were “potential” and “however” to his complete bafflement at the neologisms in Shakespeare, from the complexity of pub nicknames to the Brian Conley comment which has completely coloured his perception of Ed Sheeran forever – and ours too now.

And all this within the context of his blindness, something so many people don’t quite now how to allude to, resorting to all manner of circumlocutions instead. But it certainly leaves you thinking just what on earth it must take to stand there in front of an impressive Monday night audience without being able to see any of us – and yet to be so funny and so natural.

Saving the best to last, it was his description of his varicose vein where you really wouldn’t want one and of his prostate (and indeed prostrate) exam that brought the house down. Excellent – as indeed was his support for the night, the musical comedian Jon Long, again an engaging natural delivery, plus a cracking tale of foxes making love in the night.