Rory Motion reviewed by Chris Longden

This review was written by a member of the Ilkley Literature Festival review team. The Review Team take part in a special reviewing workshop at the start of the Festival before attending Festival events.

 

At first I was worried. Deeply worried. Because of the item of clothing that Rory Motion happened to be wearing when he entered the Ilkley Playhouse. Indeed, I have always harboured a deep phobia of berets, set at a jaunty angle on someone’s head. Especially if the aforementioned happens to be something rather brightly coloured (this one was a dreadful shade of ‘fuschia’).

But thankfully my fears were unfounded – and Mr Motion instantly ripped the dratted thing from his head and declared that he was doing ‘Ilkley – bah tat!’

And from that point onwards, the jokes, the puns and the pleasant prattle didn’t cease. Like the rest of the audience, I warmed instantly to Rory’s personality – a self-described ‘old hippy who lives in a caravan. Clearly, I’m a highly successful entertainer!’

Almost conning us into a stream of consciousness, he poured forth with perambulations that meandered from the Creation Myth (‘so what existed before the Big Bang then? Was it just a suspicious looking package?’ to contemplation, (‘I stayed up all night thinking about the sun…and then it dawned on me,’) and then onto following a career in meditation (‘because I found myself spending a lot of the day doing nothing and I thought – why not formalise it?’)

The crowd also seemed to be appreciative (if not somewhat bemused) of Rory’s ability to perform his own songs on guitar, whilst playing a xylophone with his head.

A short but sweet evening which all in all, left everyone walking away with a smile on their faces – heading perhaps homeward bound for a ‘vegan snack’ (glass of water).

Chris Longden hails from Manchester but lived in the Kalahari for 4 years with the San bushmen, writing 2 books about them. Chris now lives in a slightly less sandy place – Huddersfield –  and runs an international charity in between writing novels (northern comedy) and blogging at funnylass.wordpress.com