Phil Ellis: Bath Mat Review – Taskmaster goof celebrates his middle-aged failures | comedy

pHale Ellis was watching the Netflix specials, and noticed that all of the stand-up alpha shows now have a hype guy hyping them up before the show. Here, then, is his own version, a fellow Northerner (comedian Tom Short) rattling off a list of Ellis’ unaccomplished accomplishments in a threadbare American accent, punctuated by gunshot sound effects and an air horn. The modest success of Taskmaster doesn’t surprise Ellis: With his new show, he continues to revel in the failures and trivialities of his middle age, a 44-year-old who recently moved back home with his parents—single, balding, skinny.

In Bath Mat, he turns it all into uproarious laughter, inviting us to abuse him, question his observations with the audience, and laugh all the while, thinking he’s getting away with doing this for a living. Over the course of two hours, I found the set to be more subdued than Ellis’s focused songs that I enjoyed on the sidelines. It’s a disorganized compendium of barely relevant routines, with more emphasis on down-to-earth situations than the antics that often characterize his work. With sections like his chat with his audience about roadkill, or another section about the luxurious treatment of pets, we’re in the zone of less subtlety-focused comedy and more well-rounded comedy.

Which is fair enough: As fans of his anarchic children’s shows Funz and Gamez know, few do it better than Ellis. And there’s basic fun to be had here as he takes amusing snapshots from his childhood photo album, shares tales of Duff’s parties and jokes about how little his parents welcome him back into the family home. The sprawling show comes together most effectively in its titular routine, when Ellis’s style of gathering a crowd — in this case, to a question about bathroom mats — elicits a lively and entertaining response. There is a later section, which corrects basic information about his father and late mother, and brings some amazingly comedic scenarios to life.

If a little of the routine here is worth the gunshots and exclamation marks in the air that the hype man keeps dishing out — well, that’s part of the point with Ellis, who brags about the effects and finds in the foolishness much to celebrate.