Comedy Festival 2018: Dave Hughes at one with his crowd in The Snorkeler ★★★½

DAVE Hughes’ mainstream raves connect with huge audience.

HYSTERIA. Warrnambool’s proudest son has the crowd in holy hysterics for 63 minutes. The women on my left and right shout “Yes” and “It’s true” like parishioners in a Baptist Church as Hughesy glides through safe, funny bits on self-serve checkouts, being offered drugs by homeless people and heckling a tall latecomer by asking him “Did you get stuck under the Montague St bridge.”

Dave Hughes in The Snorkeler.

Hughesy’s endless hot streak continues with The Snorkeler, a show ostensibly about his indefatigable approach to impressing the ladies as a lad while his surfer mates were riding bigger waves of female popularity.

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It clearly worked, we all know Hughesy is “punching above his weight” as his supposed “fans” remind him on his Instagram account every time he posts a pic of he and Holly. One person on the street asked for a selfie, calling themselves his “biggest fan”, which led to this glorious exchange.

Fan: “What are you doing tonight?”

Hughesy: “The Comedy Festival is on!”

Fan: “Oh, who are you seeing?”

Family is an evergreen topic for Hughesy, following his 2013 Freezer Bread show and he works refreshingly un-PC gear about his home life, calling his son a very nasty thing in retaliation for betraying his football team allegiance.

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Hughesy chastises himself for making a weak vegan joke then wins us back with an excellent Serena Williams routine.

An alarmingly clunky gearshift sees the last part of the show spiral out of control (his crowd are very forgiving) as he gets us back to Mick Fanning and punching sharks and, yes, finally the anecdote about snorkelling.

Dave is very much in on the joke, he plays up his squawky eight-year-old boy voice and grotesque Angus Young meets The Joker facial expressions. “I talk a big game here,” he quips at one stage, self-deprecatingly.

To see Hughesy in his element is a neat way to tap into what most Australians find amusing, a cheeky comedian at one with the stage, his people.

Hughesy, he has no problems.

Dave Hughes, The Snorkeler

Athenaeum Theatre, until April 22.

comedyfestival.com.au