Review: Ed Gamble and Chloe Petts, Grand Opera House, York

PICKING a warm-up act for your stand-up show is a balancing act for any star comic.

You need to choose someone amusing enough to meet the job description: they need to jolly the crowd along, whetting their appetite for the top of bill. An appetiser, if you like, to the main course.

But you probably don't want the first act to be funnier than you.

After a night in the company of top comic Ed Gamble and his 'first course' Chloe Petts, I do wonder whether the comedy star famous for his TV appearances and podcasts might just have got that balance wrong.

To say that Chloe Petts, a self-declared "butch lesbian", stole the show at the Grand Opera House on Wednesday is perhaps controversial.

Rising star: Chloe Petts who was the warn-up act for Ed Gamble in York. Image: Supplied

But I certainly belly-laughed my way through her 20-minute opener during which she shared her experiences of being a 'child geezer' and enjoyed a daring banter with the audience, pointedly working her way through the front rows asking random members: "Are YOU gay?".

On her exit, a voice over announced Chloe will be returning to York on February 15 for a solo gig (at Theatre@41 Monkgate). I immediately bought a ticket during the interval. My advice is to grab one while you can.

Already a guest on shows such as HIGNFY and Live at The Apollo, Petts is a star in the making, if not already made.

In contrast, Gamble is a celebrity comedian whose fame is perhaps at its apex.

Readers may feel they know him already from his myriad of appearances on all the usual telly comedy shows and from his hit podcast Off Menu with James Acaster, and as a judge on Great British Menu. Gamble is also the host of Taskmaster the Podcast and has his own special, Blood Sugar, on Amazon Prime.

He was in York for the latest leg of his ‘Hot Diggity Dog’ tour and launched the show with a local connection - reminding the audience that he had been blamed for the disappearance of legendary York duck Long Boi - whose statue was unveiled in a ceremony live on Radio One this month.

Ed Gamble poster for this current tour with came to York this week

Gamble revealed he had found a poster in his dressing room which read: 'You have eaten Long Boi and you should be ashamed of yourself!'.

Nice. As was his initial - and now customary - Q&A with brave souls in the first couple of rows, especially when he picked out a maths student who had come to the show on his own. This innocent also provided the best laugh of the night when half way through his act, Gamble spotted the student playing with a Rubik's cube.

"This is the weirdest thing I have ever seen," the comedian declared, genuinely dumbstruck.

Gamble has built a persona around the character of a man child, and in his latest show he mines the new frontiers of married life with tales about his disappointing honeymoon in Las Vegas and a nasty injury he received from using a mandolin while making dauphinoise. He spilled the contents of his neighbourhood WhatsApp group and told us how he prefers cats to babies. There was a long set piece about being dressed up as a drag queen, which struggled to take off.

On paper, some of this sounds like it could be comedy gold.

But on stage, it felt a bit flat; the delivery too scripted and desperately in need of some sparks of spontaneity.