REVIEW – Devizes Arts Festival – Alfie Moore’s Fair Cop Unleashed @ Corn Exchange 24th June 2022

Criminal Humour

Andy Fawthrop

The Devizes Arts Festival left it late in their programme to unleash one of its comedy big guns Friday night, but it was well worth the wait. And a huge audience packed out the Corn Exchange to witness some great comedy in action…..

Alfie Moore is a comparatively recent talent to come on to the comedy circuit, but he’s already cornered the market in combining real-life police experience with a natural comedic ability. Recently retired as a police sergeant, with over twenty years’ front-line service with our finest, he has a wealth of real-life insights and comedy moments to share.

Looking every bit the slightly overweight, world-weary copper who’s heard every excuse in the book, Alfie has developed a wry, observational comedic style, which lends itself to witty, and sometimes gritty, anecdotes based on everyday modern policing. He also proved himself to be an adept socio-political commentator and weaved this all together with his take on the comedy gold of real life, the stuff that you just can’t make up.

He led us through his back-story, including his dyslexia, lack of formal education and his low self-esteem. Born and raised on a council estate in Sheffield, he was an apprentice in the steelworks before managing to join the Police, possibly through a mix-up in the paperwork. He was later inspired to take up stand-up comedy in 2007 after his first taste of live comedy at a local comedy club. He quickly became well and truly hooked, and was soon performing regularly up and down the country. (Since then he has written and performed his own one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival six times now. His BBC Radio 4 comedy series ‘It’s A Fair Cop’ debuted in July 2014 and, following exceptional feedback from listeners and media reviews, further series have since been commissioned.) Last night he was touring his latest show ‘Fair Cop Unleashed’.

The first half consisted mostly of a general stand-up routine, getting himself into the murky world of gender politics, treading a very fine line between the acceptable and the very non-PC, beautifully rescued at the end by a great gag about having to know someone’s gender in order to know how much to pay them. There was some great stuff about police nick-names, the CPS (“Couldn’t Prosecute Satan”), and the ongoing struggle with paperwork in his Grimsby posting.

But it was the second half before he finally laid out his “real life” incident with a mysterious and inebriated clown walking in to his police station, asking for help to find four lions lost from the circus. What followed was the tale of his hilarious attempts to make sense of it all, to work with others (armed police that he referred to as “the Milk Tray men”) to re-capture the four dangerous wild beasts roaming the town (he was advised “try not to look like prey”), whilst overcoming his genuine fear that he might actually die.

His style throughout was engaging, confidential and dead-pan. The whole thing was genuinely funny, laugh-out-loud hilarious, with the gags and asides coming thick and fast. Long and loud applause was his just reward.

The Devizes Arts Festival finished Saturday 25th June with Absolute – Last Night Celtic Party at The Corn Exchange. Devizine congratulates The Devizes Arts Festival and thanks them for putting on such an excellent programme of events, looking forward to another great summer in 2023.

Editor’s Note: I’d also like to thank Andy for his extensive coverage of the Arts Festival over the last fortnight, covering almost every event can be exhausting, but it goes a long way to show how jam-packed the Arts Festival is and the dedication from the team to provide Devizes with some quality and diverse performances.