Last year I spent Valentine's night watching Bridget Jones with my dad. It was not, as I'm sure you can imagine, top of my list of chosen Valentine's activities, nor his I'm sure. Neither of us has mentioned this bleak and vaguely awkward evening since. This occasion was one of the lower points in my Valentine's history, a low point that I am delighted to say this year has been overshadowed by a night of raucous comedy from the hugely talented Oxford Revue. And it would take a fuck-off huge chocolate heart to beat them.
From host Ed Garnett's leaning over a loved-up couple in the audience and whispering "I hate you", to Ollie Mann and Rory O'Keeffe's visualisation of love letter writing in the high society of the early nineteenth century, and later an extremely visual sketch of a man and his particularly outspoken penis, the event picked up on a multitude of the issues and insecurities of love, and indeed the lack thereof. Perhaps inadvertently it left me with the feeling that none of us have ever really had a clue about love, and we still don't, as exemplified in the bewildered Chris Da Silva's essay on the epistemology of the topic. Even more profound was the realisation that trying to work out how many kisses to send your crush will never not be the most stressful thing you do in your life. And that it's OK to write a love song to a jar of pesto. The night dipped in and out of its Valentine theme, with enough totally off-topic sketches to avoid saturation point. The Revue newcomers showed great promise, with a wonderful sketch (one so 'Oxford' that half of their conversation could have been picked up whilst sitting outside the Bod) of two Classics academics totally disconnected from any kind of contemporary reality.
So to conclude, did the Oxford Revue beat a night in with Bridget Jones and my dad? Hell yes.
In all seriousness, this is not a great comparison - in fact that evening could have been beaten by an M&S dinner for two, eaten alone, but I do honestly urge you all to go see the Revue, either all together or as individual comedians. There was too much talent to mention here, highly recommended.