Reviewing Ian Smith’s breakout show Crushing two summers ago, I compared the Yorkshireman to Rhod Gilbert, another comic who gets very het up at the most trivial provocation. Smith’s follow-up show mirrors Gilbert in a different way, by addressing an issue the Welshman became associated with in standup and documentary: infertility. Foot Spa Half Empty is about Smith’s low sperm count, discovered as he and his partner start trying for a child. It arranges a suite of humiliating stories and manic overthinking comedy around the more substantial tale of our host’s visit to a clinic to have his sperm tested – in Smith’s hands, it’s as surefire an anecdote for self-abasing standup as it’s possible to imagine.
Give or take a weak ending, it’s a killer stage return from a man now increasingly recognisable from your TV screens. Not that fame has gone to his head; Google (“people also search for Robert Mugabe”) has seen to that. He did briefly worry that success might defang a comic style rooted in anxiety and failure. But lo, big-time Smith still sweats the small stuff, and very funnily. See his section about being mocked for being a poor skier, another deconstructing the phrase “wrong place, wrong time”, and a memorable set piece about a gull with a steak knife in its beak harassing punters in a beer garden.
These are big-impact routines, all the funnier for their tone of voice, which combines a relish for the absurd, an inability to let things go and an adhesive relationship with indignity. All come into play as the 36-year-old relates his fertility journey, which finds him buying a magic spell from Amazon (“And if that worked, I’m scared of that baby …”), roadtesting old wives’ tales, and pontificating on the milestones that signal we’re getting old – which include, in Smith’s case, a father-son tutorial in extra-strong mints.
You can bet that phrase “extra strong” gets a workout from Smith: not a man to leave a casual figure of speech un-interrogated. It may be wearisome to possess, but Smith’s worrisome personality is catnip for comedy lovers. With him at the mic, laughs, at least, go forth and multiply.
