Smuttering! This is my invented word. It means a very small innuendo. I invented it for Alex Horne, whose very funny show Wordwatching is one of two that he is bringing to Greenbelt this summer.
Wordwatching tells the story of Alex's attempt to get a new word into the Oxford English Dictionary - an attempt that is still very much alive. He has ten words that he is sneaking into interviews, newspaper articles and on one occasion (with hilarious consequences) Channel 4's Countdown.
You will see the story unfold ingeniously on PowerPoint (with which Alex is, frankly, obsessed) during the show. But he will also ask you to contribute your own inventions. (My friend Paul offered 'scabweasel', which means someone who is endlessly trying to get stuff free or cheap, and Jon came up with 'tristaning', which means having your child baptised with a preposterous Christian name.) I just loved this show - daft, inventive, and very, very funny.
Alex Horne is part of the generation of comedians that rose together five or six years ago. He was a Perrier award nominee at the Edinburgh Festival. It is a group that stands out from the others as approachable and generous-hearted, and it includes Mark Watson and Tim Key, who appear with Alex in BBC4's brilliant spoof quiz We Need Answers.
Alex is bringing two shows to Greenbelt and performing both twice. (Has to, or the queues would circle the racecourse!) The other is Birdwatching, which begins as a reflection on the laughable pointlessness of spotting birds as a hobby, and ends as a poignant portrait of the relationship between fathers and sons, as he gets locked into a competition with his father to see the most species during the course of a year. Alex's witty book Birdwatchingwatching (no, I haven't spelt it wrong) will be in the Greenbelt bookshop.
There are lots of things I am looking forward to at Greenbelt this year, but this is the one that made me want to buy my ticket. Both shows are for grown-ups - not that they are unsuitable for children, but because the laughter is full of razor sharp ideas. In fact, there is no sex, violence or bad language at all. But there is the occasional smuttering!
by Peter Graystone, Greenbelt Performing Arts
