A couple of days after welcoming his first child into the world last August, comedian Al Murray won the Edinburgh Festival s coveted People s Choice and Perrier Awards (the latter, famously, at the fourth time of asking) and signed a multi-million pound deal with Sky Television. Not one to rest on his barrels, the bullet-headed Pub Landlord took his show on the road before setting up shop in London s Playhouse Theatre, a two month residency which is rapidly drawing to its conclusion and looks set to win him an Olivier Award.
It s fair to say that the world is very much Al Murray s oyster, except that his boorish alter ego would scoff at such a notion. Oysters, you see, fall into the gastronomic bracket marked Foreign Muck , and the self-styled King of Beers has little truck with foreign bodies of any stripe or shade.
A hulking, sneering skinhead, Murray cuts an imposing figure as he strides purposefully towards front of house at the opening of his critically acclaimed show And A Glass Of White Wine For The Lady. Looking every inch the menacing host, from the crest on his mauve blazer to the giant, brass BEER belt-buckle which spans his waist, he holds a pint aloft and urges us all to cheer the beer and hail the ale.
Once we ve obliged, he takes his place behind the bar, setting out his stall before getting down to the serious business of the evening. Fellas, we re informed, drink beer. Ladies, on the other hand, can drink whatever they like . . . as long as it s white wine or some other fruit-based beverage. To prove he means business he confiscates cans of lager from two hapless wenches in the front row, checks them for lime and, upon finding none, replaces them with glasses of white wine poured from his personal stash behind the bar.
Within 15 minutes, The Pub Landlord is on first name terms with most of the front row and the occupants of all the Playhouse Theatre s boxes. Rather than befriend them, he belittles them, savagely cutting each and every one down to size with a barrage of caustic quips. Jeremy, a systems analyst, is quickly dismissed as a lost cause. Why? Simple. Because his name is Jeremy and he s a systems analyst. It s not a proper name and it s not a proper job, is it Jeremy? It s not bricklaying, now, is it? the Landlord mocks.
Sean the plumber, however, is a different kettle of fish. He s been blessed with an appropriate name and an honorable trade, but he s also got long hair and an earring. You re having a bit of a crisis, aren t you Sean, Al expounds. I say go for it. You should just have the operation and call yourself Siniad. Another victim is pilloried for being in the business of making documentaries: You ve no life of your own so you have to live vicariously through others, is that how it is? enquires the Landlord. And as for Chip, the poor Yank in the audience . . . let s just say that a good shrink should be able curb any long-term psychological damage.
Over 90 magnificently entertaining minutes (divided by a 15-minute beer break, naturally) Murray s bigoted publican peddles an hilarious brand of ill-informed bar-room philosophy. On a one man mission to put the Great back into Great Britain, he sets the record straight with a frank and open discussion of opinions and common sense. I m not comparing myself to Jesus. I m just saying there are glaring similarities, he announces, before railing against what he sees as the unnatural order of things: gays, the EU, the Internet, the Germans, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, the Irish, the Scottish and the Welsh. Among others.
His diatribes are delivered in bullish fashion, and throughout, he continues to crush assorted members of the audience with sadistic expertise. Despite my seat at the back of the stalls, I somehow became embroiled in a vociferous debate about existentialism, a subject I know or care little about. Needless to say, I was pasted; Sartre himself would have given up his entire set of beliefs after a couple of rounds of verbal with the Landlord. Unable to tolerate anything which doesn t fit in with his blinkered world view, he violently rams his opinions down our throats, shouting the odds and telling us what s what: Teaching? Since they abolished the cane it s not attracted the right kind of people. Illness? Let s have proper plagues again, not syndromes and disorders. The Chinese? With an alphabet like that, you d number your food too. The Foreign Legion? Why call it foreign? We know it s foreign . . . it s fucking French, isn t it?
Al Murray has been criticised in the press for picking easy targets, the argument being that a character of the Landlord s (lack of) sensibilities would treat blacks and Asians with even more withering contempt than he does the French. For reasons best known to himself, Murray - clearly a profoundly intelligent man - has chosen not to venture down this path, and to castigate him for it is to nit-pick. The Pub Landlord is a wondrous creation, and given the manner in which he is simultaneously celebrated and sent up, it s small wonder that he s currently the toast of London.