Charlie Pickering re-enacts his year 9 school photo.

A Beginner’s Guide
Starring: Charlie Pickering
Appearing at: The Comedy Theatre, for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Charlie Pickering, a stalwart of the local comedy scene, has recently carved a niche as Channel Ten’s resident bearded wit through his regular gigs on Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation and The 7PM Project. He has a warm onscreen presence, slightly raffish but generous, informed and funny.

Yet his performances can feel straitened, as if there is something inside him that he wants to get out but can’t due to the censorious nature of broadcast television. Having seen A Beginner’s Guide, I suspect that something is the word ‘fuck’.

Lots of comedians swear, and many do so more profusely and creatively than Charlie Pickering, but the liberation of Pickering’s vocabulary had a remarkable effect upon the A Beginner’s Guide audience. It sounds ridiculous, but many people appeared genuinely shocked – in a delighted way – that Pickering was so fluent with the swears. That a thirtysomething comedian dropping F-bombs should be cause for surprise or delight or anything at all speaks volumes about the potentially insidious effects of developing a public persona on PG-rated panel shows.

A Beginner’s Guide combines prepared material and “riffy jiffy”, Pickering’s name for lively improv segments. The material is generally strong, mixing anecdotes, observations and moments of random weirdness such as Pickering reading selections from blues legend BB King’s thoroughly awful autobiography, complete with atrocious King impersonation. A couple of segments felt airless, with Pickering wedded to his script like an actor telling an anecdote on a chat show, but for the most part Pickering delivers amusing and divergent material.

The real joy, however, is in the improv. On the night The Enthusiast attended, the biggest laughs came early when a particularly obnoxious heckler demanded “more comedy, less audience interaction”. Pickering’s slow burn was hilarious and his cutting put-downs had the audience cheering. Pickering’s less combative audience interaction worked well too and I would have liked to see more of it.

A Beginner’s Guide is enjoyable, but it lacks crescendos and memorable gags, at least during its scripted portions. Pickering can’t be faulted for professionalism: he is relaxed and charming and seems genuinely pleased to be performing. The audience, in return, was relaxed and charmed and genuinely pleased to be there. Nothing ground-breaking here, then, but good fun nonetheless.