The ghosts of dubious barnets past, for most adults with shame, are long-exorcised and never spoken of.
Amid cries of, “Is that you?”, Mark Diamond turned his flipchart to reveal an earlier version of himself recapturing the brooding, gel-soaked earnestness of a failed 1990s boyband member. It was the tip of the iceberg in his brave personal retrospective.
Those haircuts gave a loose theme to this highly watchable performer’s show.
Self-effacing about his day job as a branding whizz, he still couldn’t help showing his finesse with presentation boards, turning the female anatomy into a pair of swans and designing a ruler which constantly flatters men when it comes to intimate personal measurements.
He’s longed for his potential workmate-turned-lover’s boyfriend to err and snared a relationship while eating yoghurt on the Underground.
But the less expected moments – a phone call from his mum and the arrival and swift departure of an attendee who’d lost his wife between the bar and the front row – showed Diamond’s natural comedic talent and easy patter at its best.
Puns took on sandwich shop names in Norfolk (“In Bread”) and his dream of skydiving into London to the EastEnders theme tune is inspired, even if the same, alas, can rarely be said of all his dodgy old trims.
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