Multi-award-winning comedian, Babatunde Aléshé', brings his new stand-up show to our city. Family life, fame and Costco are among his topics, but will these make the Nottingham audience laugh?
A packed out, diverse and eager Playhouse warmly receives support act Muhsin Yesilada. Immediately engaging, his onstage confident banter with the front row is refreshingly inter-generational as he mines for topics. Like the star attraction, he is warm and relatable. Delivering comic observations based on his own experiences as a British Muslim and his family; especially his father and annoying nine-year-old nephew. It is refreshing and heart-warming to see we have a new generation of clever, spritely young comedians, with their fingers on the pulse of young Britain coming through. Comedians who find and deliver intelligent and relevant comedy that can unite people during dark, divisive days.
Spotlit-illuminated, Tottenham’s finest, Babatunde strides on stage with the ease and panache of an entertainer in his prime. Dizzying overnight success, twenty years in the making has seen him routinely tour the country, a regular funny face on panel shows, consolidated as a contestant on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here, revealing his talent, energy and focus is supported by a damn good agent.
He's instantly absorbingly, engaging, extracting laughter from the crowd as his “What’s your name and what do you do?” front row routine backfires when an elderly gentleman reveals he is a Church Pastor, causing Baba to not only temporarily moderate his content, but gives him a comedic hook to return to throughout the show, which he does with laugh out loud comedic timing.
His crass emotional nudity reveals how he’d recently embraced therapy
Baba opens up on the pressures of ten years of marriage, fatherhood to two wonderful children and how fame, bringing responsibility, renders him as a representative of Black Britain and the Nigerian diaspora. His crass emotional nudity reveals how he’d recently embraced therapy. Therein, he mines a wealth of comedy. From his well-known fear of heights (I’m A Celebrity), driving and how he is convinced his therapist is a gang leader. Conquering his fears he passes his driving test first time, before being accused of driving like a bitch.
But it is the time-honoured sacred cow of comedy, the family and its inherent relationships, that allows him to drop through the gears and have the audience laughing out loud. Baba doesn’t like the Big Ted who who turns up the tea parties his three year old daughter makes him regularly attend. Nor does he like son’s bourgeois palette, his taste for smoked salmon and eggs benedictine. But it is his invitation for us to consider how women would respond if roles were reversed and it was him or any other man for that matter, whose birthday present to their partner was the promise of some sex later that evening, would go down, that has the room in hysterics.
Baba asked members of the audience if they visited the British Museum, he gets the desired response when he asked if they’d come across the British section. In a time of political tension when the hard right are making some towns resemble East Belfast, Babatunde represents a Britain that knows itself, is comfortable with itself and most of all is able to laugh at itself. Catch this show whilst you can.
Babatunde Aléshé's High Expectations performed at the Nottingham Playhouse on Wednesday Nov 19 2025.
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