ANGELOS Epithemou and Barry from Watford brought their ‘New Power Generation’ to The Lowry last night – another stop on their lengthy UK tour.

Angelos, played by comedian Dan Skinner has been on the comedy circuit for quite some time. Originally known as the Angelos Epithemou on BBC show Shooting Stars, he shot to fame alongside pals Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, Matt Lucas and Ulrika Johnson. Barry from Watford also has a memorable past in comedy – most noticeably playing the Physic Clinton Baptiste in Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights.

Before the pair played their main act, support act Barbara Nice (played by Janice Connolly) performed for the Salford crowd. Barbara was a ‘piggin’ brilliant way to start the show – a quote which she took through with her throughout the show. Barbara is the caricature of a middle aged housewife who talks about her husband Ken – who she shares a love hate relationship with.

Barbara easily could have performed all night. Her brilliantly orchestrated comedic timing left the audience in stitches, and her constant deprecating agony-aunt routine showed not only her dry sense of humour, but her ability to turn the slightest comment from the audience into another part of her routine.

Barbara rounded off her set at around 9pm – and for an act which was relatively unknown prior to the performance, she no doubt will continue to grow her name on the comedy circuit for an comedian with genuine talent.

The main attraction, Angelos and Barry then made their way onto the stage after a short interval.

The act started with Barry, played by Chris Lowe, came out straight off the bat and began talking about his and Angelos’ ‘New Power Generation’ a spiritual cult which both Angelos and Barry had created for the tour – but Angelos only wanted to be a part of it so he could pick up women to deal with his sex addiction.

As for Barry – he had psoriasis.

His red, flaky skin under his scrotum to be more specific. He walked around with a diaper under his trousers, which he occasionally showed the audience during the set, which after a few drinks was almost quite surreal to watch.

Angelos, who has previously done work on his own on the Angelos Epithemou Show could have easily ran the show on his own.

His awkward mumbling humour was almost more hilarious than the double act on stage. When either part of the act went off stage, the other could easily hold the audience’s attention simply by saying nothing – very early on they had managed to do this, and the audience were loving it.

Regularly, the double act kept referring to the fact that they want to save ‘all animals’ that is of course except for spiders and polar bears – these were exempt from the list because they were nice enough animals to save.

The New Power Generation was out in full swing – and throughout the night they were doing their up most to get everyone else involved.

Angelos even had a date on stage with a member of the audience whilst they asked each other what their favourite position was.

There wasn’t the slightest feeling of awkwardness in their performance, even if most of their content could have been cringe-inducing to a more conservative viewer. Then again, I doubt that a conservative viewer would be the kind of viewer that Angelos and Barry would attract.

By Daniel Willis

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