Snipe London Review – August 2012
Comedy flows over the Edinburgh Fringe like a deluge of blood. Stand up comics rain down like frogs telling rape jokes and lo, a plague of agents and BBC scouts and award ceremonies doth sweep through the make-shift venues of the land.
Nick Hodder wants to be a part of that multitude. Having bought the £900 CD course with supplemental books, though not having listened to it yet, Hodder bumbles through a comedy minefield like a suicidal sapper. Insert Comedy Here isn’t a stand-up show, it’s beautifully sustained satirical sketch tearing apart the identi-kit jesters currently swamping the small stages and huge arenas of Britain. A straight man to the disembodied voice on the CD player, Hodder needs do little more than react to his master’s dismissive commands, but at times I was laughing so hard my face seized up. Actually, painfully, worryingly seized up, and I was blinded with tears. It was terrifying. Nick Hodder is the Moses of comedy. Here endeth the metaphor.
