Review: Port of Call Hilarity Bites comedy night

The new venue in Sunderland brought a new event on February 6.

Port Of Call hosted a side splitting comedy night with Hilarity Bites. The night began with MC Andy Fury, who won the Hilarity Bites New Act Of The Year 2010 title. It was clear to see why from the get go.

Fury went for the obvious start of making a mockery of the first row, but preceded to make an even bigger mockery of himself, stating he was aware he looked like the kind of guy who had a favourite calculator. His self deprecating, dark humour was well received all round.

Following Fury was Carl Hutchinson, winner of the Beat The Frog World Series and Magners Comedian of the Year Awards in 2007. Hutchinson was confident, friendly and came across as a likeable comic. The majority of the comedy itself was anecdotal, an awkward story about a chipped tooth.

An impersonation of a greeting he and friends did in school probably received the most laughs.

After a short interval, John Whale took to the stage. The young comic was enjoyable to watch and told intellectual jokes. The audience seemed to have a whale of a time.

Duncan Oakley brought the last act of the night and by far the best. The comedian used a mix of stand up and infectious musical comedy. Retrieving his guitar from the side of the stage the comedian preformed a few of his very original songs all of which are available to download from iTunes.

The best song being Here She Comes, which is about a mother-in-law who is compared to Genghis Khan. Oakley concluded his act using his body as an instrument, to a performance of Headless Bird, another song that went down a storm.

The atmosphere was palpable with success as Port of Calls first comedy night ended on a high.

A spokesperson for Hilarity Bites said: “Initially the venue have agreed to run two shows (February and March) to see how popular it is with the audiences. Hopefully, should March be as successful as the show in February then the show will continue to run on the first Friday of the month from May onwards (it’s unlikely to run in April, as it would fall on Good Friday).”