Review: David Baddiel brings five-star masterclass to Yorkshire

Way back in the day, the cry from the break-time playground used to start “Sticks and stones may hurt my bones…” It was the standard reply to any vindictive assertion or threat. But that was a long time ago, in what we might consider to be a more innocent age, before the internet, mobile phones and social media.

Comedians have always been ahead of the game, able to deal with the occasional heckler. David Baddiel, however, doesn’t give us accounts of the joy of that spontaneous whimsy. He’s here to reveal the levels of malevolence that today’s “society” seems to feed on. Baddiel is a force to be reckoned with on Twitter. And his new show deals entirely and completely with his tweets, his responses to others, and their replies to his own droll observations.

It’s an evening of much hilarity, but, woven deftly into the fun are many dry asides about the people out there who feel they have to give their views on everything, no matter how trivial. It’s a sometimes astonishing meander through a world of misinformation, bad spelling, and atrocious grammar.

A world of (sometimes) shrewd and pithy thought, balanced more often by crude name-calling. There is humour out there, but there are also a lot of very sharp barbs. Baddiel – in what seems to be an evolving mass-therapy session – impishly guides us through the chaos, gives a few acerbic thoughts, and leaves his audience with much to ponder. He’s also gloriously self-deprecating, and pungently funny.

As a student of human nature at its very worst (and occasionally very best) he is second to none. By the end of the evening, the student has turned into the wise professor conducting a masterclass.

At York Grand Theatre, April 5.