Andrew Maxwell and the Gay Hussar (Or two nights in Soho)

At the end of a trying week, a good laugh is what you need. So I took a couple of young friends to the Soho Theatre to see an hour's comedy from Andrew Maxwell, a young Irish comic (and frankly comics seem to be Ireland's main cash export these days.) It was a really successful evening, after a difficult start. My colleague struggled to get out in the office on time, and then we both struggled even more to get on the tube as someone had earlier gone under a train on the Central Line. You can tell how packed it was by the fact that there wasn't even enough room for the two of us to get in the one train. I had to go in advance to pick up the tickets and the third member of our squad. But in the end we just made in time to settle down with our drinks for the performance to start. From then it went brilliantly.

Andrew Maxwell was very good. He is in the story-telling tradition of comics rather than gag-tellers, and we really enjoyed him and his take on life. It would be invidious to try and pick many highlights, but did quite like the one of him taking his lad, bought up in posh London ways to his first football match at Liverpool. Surrounded my Scousers, the lad pulled out the drink he had brought with him and announced "Ahh, that Waitrose tonic water is to die for!" If you don't find that funny, you are too middle-class. Or you need to read it in an Irish accident. Or maybe his description of a Nigerian taxi-driver who had "joined" the racist Dublin tax-drivers in painting a tricolour on his taxi, to display his Irishness. "So what do you say to people when they see your black face? "My name is Kieron O'Malley - now do you want to get home tonight or not?" As he pointed out, its not that the Irish aren't racist - they have just had 400 years bottling it up waiting for another race to come along.

But the show was only the first half of the evening. As it finished at 8:30 we finished our drinks in the overcrowded bar into which we were herded to allow the nice quiet one we were in to be cleared up for the late show, and then headed down to Chinatown for a Chinese meal. And to continue the banter between us for another couple of hours. Its the great thing with having really bright young friends - you just keep joking. We really didn't stop, so I don't think a single serious thought crossed my mind in 3 hours. Bliss. A great release from the week at work. And so much cheaper than Class A drugs (or so I hear.)

Saturday night brought an older gathering - another 50th birthday celebration for a couple who had kindly invited their closest friends to dinner in a private room at the Gay Hussar. For those unaware of it, the Gay Hussar is a Hungarian restaurant, and although in Soho, not at all gay. In fact it has been the traditional watering hole for middle-class lefties, photographs and sketches of whom litter the walls. It also just happens to be in the next street the theatre I had been in the night before.

Another convivial evening, but this time very few of us were under 50, and those who were hadn't long to go, so a far cry from my 26 and 18 year old companions the night before.Wine flowed rather than beer, and the conversation was less raucous, but the evening still disappeared very quickly. So that was two nights in Soho, and not a seedy shop or club visited!