Anyone who has followed Stanhope's career, knows that part of his trademark is the wide variety of style and content. Sometimes he'll be on a hardcore political track and rant away with biting social commentary that is so sharp it will often make you embarrassed about things you did not know about yourself. Other times it seems he is on an imbecilic poop-track, where he competes with himself in seeing just how juvenile and crude he can be, taking great joy in telling long and detailed tales involving bodily fluids in the most inappropriate situation he can imagine.
In this latest set he gives us a mix of these styles. Starting off as the social satirist, he delivers some great new twists on issues like poverty and mental health care, before slowly sliding into the gross-out humor where he just tries his best to shock and disgust. While the first part is just as brilliant as we've come to expect from the great Stanhope, the problem with the latter part is that anyone who might actually be shocked and disgusted by this kind of vulgarity, will probably never see this show. His fan base will not get offended by mere coarse language, and instead of being upsetting in any way, this muck of "shock-humor" turns into Stanhope flogging a dead horse, to the point of becoming a little bit boring.
Having seen him live about half a year before this was filmed, I wish he had included more of the peculiar cleverness he preformed at that time. Even though "No Place Like Home" is not at all a bad set, this is still a long way from the brilliance of "No Refunds" or his excellent contributions to Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe.
