Promoting comedy while having lived in Sweden for a little over three years has its advantages and disadvantages. Being a positive kind of person I tend to focus mainly on the advantages: I do what I do with passion, the outsider’s eye and no baggage of how things ‘ought to be done’ in Sweden. The other thing is I tend not to be intimidated by the big names – mainly because I didn’t grow up watching them and it’s hard to get your head round the status of someone having been a contestant on ‘På Spåret’.
Last night was one of these occasions. It was the second of three nights at Palatset in Linköping and I had booked Pontus Enhörning as the headliner. I knew the name and knew that he was good, but had never met him before. I began to get a hint of who he was when I went through the list of headliners with the landlords of the pub. At Pontus’ name they both let out a spontaneous little squeal. When I told Danny that he would be performing before Pontus his eyes went a little bit watery, he hugged me for a little bit too long and said with a quiver in his throat ‘He is my idol’.
Palle filled me in before the gig, describing him as the man who redefined popular radio in the 90’s breaking the dry boring patriarchal mold to being fun, witty and a little bit edgy. ‘Nothing less than a radio legend’. I was looking forward to finding out more straight from the horse’s mouth, but thanks to good old SJ, his train arrived an hour and a half late which gave me just about enough time to say hi, introduce everyone, including a star struck Danny, and get onstage.
And the show was a corker. Starting with Jens giving a solid performance (back doing stand up after a year’s ‘proper acting’). Palle took to the stage and having had a couple of bad gigs recently he has taken stock and polished up his act… and he played a blinder, putting the audience in stitches. It’s time to start promoting his Facebook group again! Danny got over his nerves at being in Pontus’ presence and also came up trumps with a fantastic set. The second half kicked off with an outing for Emil’s taxman character which is getting better and better. And then it was time for the main event – Pontus Enhörning! And from the word go, he owned the stage.
He manages to play the grumpy old man while remaining fresh and rough at the edges. There was some lovely observations and characterisations of other nationalities that verged on being a bit old school, but were done so well they were hilarious (And let’s be honest, who doesn’t like laughing at the French and Germans?). But, for me, it was his observations on the Swedish persona that were right on the button – Just one example (and it’s not hard to visualise), he talked about Swedes going abroad, being overwhelmed by the life and vitality of the strange land and then observing ‘There’s an awful lot of foreigners here’.
The gig finished: audience happy, publicans happy, performers happy. Danny, Emil and Palle embarrassed themselves by having their pictures taken with Pontus who was then whisked away to catch the last train back to Stockholm. I’m looking forward to meeting him again and having a chance to chat, even though I still won’t be impressed by his status as a radio legend, although I may give away a little admiration for his skill as a stand up.
