Trevor Lock: Some Kind of Fool

Trevor Lock would have you believe that he doesn’t know the difference between a mouse and a vagina. But that’s just his type of comedy. It’s about surreal meanderings, tangled chains of word association and infrequent but well structured puns. Not jokes - that’s just not 'cutting edge'.

Following 20 minutes of unsuccessfully probing the audience, Lock enforces a game of Chinese whispers after hearing two audience members mutter: “When is he going to say something funny?” It’s when Lock has to defend the distinct lack of jokes in his set that he warms up.

For the most part Lock is all about being awkward – most notably when he verbally manoeuvres a woman into telling him that her husband left her for another woman, producing an atmosphere of embarrassment as opposed to a punchline. He stays on stage after the show has finished, so that noone is sure whether or not they are permitted to leave. During the game of whispers, the gentleman beside me refuses to pass on the sweary message uncensored, prompting Lock to spout a stream of profanities before reproaching me for laughing at vulgar language.

In a pretend attempt to please a young member of the audience, Lock makes an ironic stab at observational comedy which is as tedious as it sounds. It's when Lock drops the irony, and lowers his intellect to a level compatible with raising laughs rather than the odd knowing smirk, that he looks like a comedian. It’s a role he would easily fulfil if he didn’t leave the entertainment to his audience.