Halfway through Marc Maron’s London show the generously moustachioed American read out thoughts scribbled on Post-it notes. One line was “My comfort zone is uncomfortable,” which sums him up. Maron’s speciality is the comedy of angst. Just because things are bad doesn’t mean they won’t get worse.
The start of the gig underlined this theme as the man who famously interviewed Barack Obama for his WTF podcast discussed politics. Trump is bad but Mike Pence might be worse. What followed was a crude yet frankly hilarious routine imagining what the Vice-President might do sexually if the world was ending.
If there were shades of Stewart Lee in this story there were echoes of other UK stand-ups during his set. There was the brutal honesty of David Baddiel, even a hint of Micky Flanagan in his nostalgia, particularly during an enjoyably relatable riff about life before Google, when astonishingly we had to look things up in books.
The material shuttled between the profane and the quotidian. One moment he was talking graphically about masturbation, the next revealing his passion for PG Tips.
Elsewhere there were anecdotes about familiar on-the-road topics such as flying and hotel design, particularly glass partitions between bed and bathroom.
At the show’s heart, though, was Maron’s eternal inability to “feel OK”. His self-hate certainly produces big laughs. Towards the end he confessed that he never says “that sounds like fun”. Which is ironic because for his audience he was plenty of fun.
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