, being a tearaway teenager, the types of people who frequent gyms, parenthood, taking his children to a trampoline park and having to buy trampoline socks, the last of which provides a terrific payoff late in the set. An overlong section describes how he came to be on BGT and his experiences on it. He is enjoying his recent rise to fame, he says – emails from Nigerian princes have started dropping in his inbox - but he undercuts it wonderfully by describing his new lifestyle: 'No more Primark... TK Maxx now.' The hour dragged at times and some of the gags will be familiar to those who followed h){kind=link}
Comedy’s newest star showed off his flair for mimicry, observational wit and gags about trampolines at the Eventim Apollo
Axel Blake likes to make an entrance. He has a warm-up man getting the crowd to whoop and stamp their feet and an onstage DJ blasting out music as he walks on – and why not? He triumphed at Britain’s Got Talent earlier this year, winning £250,000 and a booking for the Royal Variety Performance next month after years of trying to get his break in the comedy industry.
There’ll be more than 5,000 people at the Royal Albert Hall, but he surely won’t be fazed performing in front of such a big crowd; the Eventim Apollo holds 3,300 and although he started 40 minutes after the support act finished, there was a lot of love in the nearly full room for the Londoner who until recently was earning his crust as a property maintenance manager.
His appearances on the talent show proved that he has a winning style. Blake is a smiley, energetic and physical comic who likes to act out a lot of his observational material – running through the various types of people in his audience, he mimics the women tottering on high heels and the gym bros whose stockiness makes them walk sideways into their seats.
His new show, In Style, is a loose collection of anecdotes and observations. Many land although others flutter away. Across an hour long set he has some good callbacks as he flits between a wide range of subjects – including his love of food (“Stormzy has put on weight,” he imagines people saying), being a tearaway teenager, the types of people who frequent gyms, parenthood, taking his children to a trampoline park and having to buy trampoline socks, the last of which provides a terrific payoff late in the set.