Show name: Dry Humour
Performers: Dave Chawner
Venue: The Loft at Laughing Horse at the Counting House
Date and time: Saturday 15th August, 6.15pm
Ticket prices: Free
Rating: 5/5 ★★★★★
Reviewer: Sarah Turnbull
Dave Chawner’s new hour takes a clear-eyed look at getting older, giving up booze and figuring out who you are when the party stops. It’s warm, wry and disarmingly open — the kind of comedy that invites you in with a grin, levels with you about life’s rough edges, then finds the funny without ever getting preachy.
From the top, Chawner sets a friendly, inclusive tone. He flags the “sobering” theme, reassures everyone they’re welcome and makes it clear this isn’t a recovery lecture. That framing matters: it lowers the temperature, lets non-drinkers and die-hard pint fans relax alike, and primes the room for stories rather than sermons. Having been sober since last April, he digs into the first-year weirdness with a pleasing specificity — the social choreography of refusing a drink, the mythology of “acquired taste”, and the sudden worry that sobriety equals becoming “beige”.
Much of the hour orbits that fear of beige and what sits beyond it. Chawner’s long-standing style — conspiratorial, self-deprecating, more twinkle than tirade — is a good fit. He’s always been strongest when mining his own life to interrogate broader norms, and here that means the culture around alcohol, British stoicism and the soft rules we write for ourselves about what a “fun” adult looks like.
There’s a new tenderness in the mix too. He and his partner are expecting a child, and the material about impending parenthood lands with a gentle thump of reality. He navigates the gulf (and sometimes smugness) between parents and non-parents with a light touch, leaning into the daftness of preparation checklists and the sudden onslaught of unsolicited advice.
Structurally, it’s a well-made hour. Set-ups are clear, callbacks click into place without feeling hammered, and the pacing keeps things buoyant. Chawner’s crowd work is light and nimble — a quick check-in here, a knowing aside there — always in service of the story. He can pivot from an honest admission to a daft image in a beat, which helps the more reflective passages breathe without stalling the momentum.
Still, the hour’s real value is in tone. This is comedy that treats grown-up change — quitting drinking, becoming a parent, acknowledging faith and doubt — as fertile ground for connection rather than division. Chawner has long been praised for finding humour within mental health conversations without lapsing into virtue-signalling; that same steadiness is at work here. He wants you to leave feeling better, not browbeaten, and on this evidence, he succeeds.
