The 2025 Croydonites Festival is well underway, and KEN TOWL could not resist the chance to go along to see the sold-old Dick’s Picks (geddit?!)
Palladium performer: Fatiha El-Ghourri plays at some world famous venues. Including The Oval Tavern
Dick Denham had been tasked with curating a range of comedians for a night of comedy at The Oval Tavern on Saturday as part of this year’s Croydonites arts festival.
Dick’s picks were an eclectic bunch, warmly MC-ed by Leslie Gold, who kept the house in order and also picked dicks as the subject matter for much of her schtick.
Gold introduced the first comic, a woman less familiar with the male member, the striking Sharifa Butterfly.
Butterfly is a dancer-turned-comedian and a virgin, whose act comprised stories about virginity and vaginas, in which she gave a slightly nervous but engaging anecdote about her avoidance of coitus, during which – inadvisedly, I was sitting on the front row – she kept asking if I was all right. I was.
Her final story was the funniest account of anyone failing to perform a blow-job in Liverpool that I had ever heard. Appropriately, it was all over too quickly.
And then we were treated to some Dick. Denham announced himself, accurately, I thought, as having the voice of a teenaged girl in the body of a craft beer brewer. He told us of his tribulations as a queer man, and his sense of achievement at being called a “batty man” rather than a mere “batty boy”.
Denham lives in Croydon and was able to deftly weave in references to the incompetence of the council and the sad state of the Whitgift Centre to his tale of isolation and mild urinary incontinence. He carried the slight odour, he said, of urine, and so could only go out in places that already smelt of piss. Fortunately, he lives in Croydon.
Comedy giant: 6ft 8in James Murphy was one of Croydon comic Dick Denham’s picks
Denham was followed by “the wonderful CK Nath”, who told tales of her creepy teenage letters to Leonardo DiCaprio, “If only I knew where you lived, and how to get there”, and played into the difference between white British mums and Indian mums, especially the latter’s use of “The Death Stare”.
It turned out to be a useful device against hecklers, too. There were a couple of guys in the front row who seemed to want to be part of the act but Nath was able to keep them in their place, to added comic effect. You couldn’t help but like her. It turned out The Oval Tavern is her local. She had never played so close to home, she told me afterwards.
Next we had comedy giant James Murphy and his observations on being a 6’8” gay man in London. That he was a 6’8” comedian on a stage that appeared to be exactly 6’7” below the ceiling was comic enough.
Murphy is very tall and very slim. He recalled his first Pride when he saw a 10-year-old child point to him and ask their mother, “Is that what a twink is?” He felt like he was an exhibition in a zoo. I won’t give away any more of Murphy’s act. If you want to hear more, go and see him. And enjoy the bit about the preying mantis.
The Death Stare: CK Nath was another element of Croydonites’ eclectic stand-up
Even the hecklers, on best behaviour during this giant man’s act, appeared to enjoy it.
Top of the bill was Fatiha El-Ghourri, but before she came on lovely MC Leslie Gold reminded the audience that they had paid to hear from the acts and asked the Heckle Brothers to respect this. Did she need to protect the headlining act?
It turned out she didn’t.
“I’m from Hackney. I will punch you in the face,” said El-Ghourri, and she had no trouble from anyone after that.
“If I whistle, about 20 boys on Lime bikes are going to come and fuck you up.”
This forty-something woman in a hijab is a force to be reckoned with. There was much humour in the mismatch between her appearance and everything she said. She had been thrown out of the mosque three time for fighting, she said, and you believed her.
She recounted how a well-meaning but patronising white audience member had once told her that “your comedy makes Muslims less scary”. I reflected that, if anything, El-Ghourri’s comedy made El-Ghourri more scary. When she got talking about Muslim dating and men – “I married two of these cunts!” – she absolutely eviscerated her targets and carried The Oval crowd with her on a wave of pugnacious wit.
At the end she did that little heart symbol that people do with their hands these days, and she was off. Once again, it was all over too quickly. Go and see her while you can still afford tickets. She’s playing the London Palladium next month, and The Comedy Store.
After the show I spoke to Anna Arthur, the director of the Croydonites Festival, and said what a wide variety of acts there had been. I probably used the word eclectic – I usually do. Arthur explained that there had been one straight white guy on the bill, but he hadn’t been able to make it. That’s straight white guys in the entertainment business for you; they appear to be everywhere, but when you want one, you can’t find one.
There’s much more of the Croydonites Festival to come, as it runs until this Saturday, October 18 (with the Tomyumsim Theatre tagged over four nights, October 28 to November1 as a kind of added extra).
There are still some tickets available for the events listed here.
Tomorrow night’s show, Evita Too, from the Sh!t Theatre Company, looks interesting.
It tells the story of the first female Argentine President, Isabel Peron, who ruled while Lloyd Webber and Rice were writing their musical about Isabel’s dead husband’s first wife. No wonder there was confusion among the panel when it came up for discussion at a Croydon Insider podcast…
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