Ben Elton Get A Grip Tour

"Ben Elton knows you are waiting. You are being held in a queue, and will be entertained shortly." This announcement comes over the tannoy at the start of Ben Elton’s sell-out Hexagon gig, part of his Get A Grip tour. He’s right, even faintly amusing, about many things – yes we are a nation permanently on hold. Probably someone will find my skeleton, a mobile still clutched in my bony fingers. Yes, ‘The Ideas Store’ may be a rubbish new name for the humble library. Maybe kids’ fizzy drinks are now so large that maybe one day children will drown in them. And why, indeed, does Starbucks serve coffee in pints? But all of these things are more Grumpy Old Men than comedy that has them rolling in the aisles. In Reading, though people did chortle, there seemed to be long gaps between belly laughs.