[unfrufru]

WHERE would Rove McManus draw the line - would a Kylie joke be funny? What about Schapelle, or Douglas Wood?

Where to draw the line is the art that separates a great comedian from a run-of-the-mill one. The ones who make you laugh until your stomach hurts tend to venture past the point of good taste, but not into the quagmire of disgust.
McManus pondered the question ahead of his return to the stand-up comedy stage in Melbourne last night, his first solo show for five years.

"It's (about) finding the right subject matter for the right audience - what will work in a smoky comedy club is probably not going to be successful in front of the broad audience you'd get at a Melbourne Comedy Festival gala," McManus said.

"I saw people doing jokes about Princess Diana on the day she passed away.

"The way they wrote it or delivered it, it didn't come out as being an unnecessary shock for the sake of making a mention of what happened."

The only thing McManus was worried about when he was thinking of returning to stand-up was whether people would want to pay to come and see him.

As it turned out, they did.

His Melbourne season is virtually sold out, Sydney is close to being so and his show is selling strongly in other states.

His parents will wait until the show gets to their home town of Perth to see it, but brother Luke McManus was in the audience last night, along with McManus's Rove Live sidekick Peter Hellier, Before the Game colleague Sam Lane and Melbourne Comedy Festival director Susan Provan. Wife Belinda Emmett was not there, but is expected to attend during the season.

Returning to stand-up, McManus said, had nothing to do with proving himself, or regrounding himself after three Gold Logie wins. It was about wanting to do it.

"If people think (my feet are off the ground) now, then unfortunately doing a stand-up tour is not going to fix it. It might even make it worse," he said.

"I'm a pretty down-to-earth person anyway. I wear jeans and T-shirts, I shop at my local Coles, I go to the movies, and I won't be sneaking in the back door, I'll be behind you waiting patiently in line."

He welcomed the contrast with television.

"On a stand-up stage, if it's not working you've got the rest of the show to try to dig yourself out of the hole you're in, and sometimes that can be a difficult thing."

Review: Rove's still funny, most of the time
By Martin Ball

AS if winning a swag of Logies isn't enough to sustain his sense of adulation, Rove McManus is hitting the boards with a show of stand-up comedy.

Beginning a nationwide tour in Melbourne last night, Rove and his microphone kept the audience entertained with the classic staples of stand-up - lots of jokes about body parts.

There were the expected breast jobs from Extreme Makeover, and the Chinese woman who didn't have an anus. Remarking on the photos of Saddam Hussein in his underpants, Rove was moved to quip he was the guy who put the "dick" in dictator.

Iraq, in fact, featured quite heavily in the show's content.

Rove didn't hide his contempt for George W. Bush, with frequent derogatory (and funny) comments on the American President. And the show closed with a song-and-dance spoof on Private Lindy England and the goings on in Abu Ghraib prison.

Rove is a short fellow, but he knows how to cope with that - pick on someone who's even shorter. In this case, Anthony Callea. Cruel, but funny - can't wait for Rove to get his comeuppance on that from someone two inches taller than him.

Michael Jackson is ripe for stand-up, and of course Rove took his place at this rich feeding trough, though given the possibilities, the result wasn't the hit it might have been.

The show went well over length, mainly because Rove was enjoying himself so much, he kept adding to jokes midstream.

Clearly, he was trying out all of his material, some of which works a treat, some of which is a bit lame (such as the extended dolphin sequence). No doubt it will tighten over coming weeks as the pretty boy takes his show around the country.

His Melbourne season is virtually sold out, Sydney is close to being so and his show is selling strongly in other states.

Returning to stand-up, Rove said, had nothing to do with proving himself, or regrounding himself after three Gold Logie wins. It was about wanting to do it.

The mostly young crowd seemed content to laugh at anything he said, anyway.

When you're hot, you're hot - even if the porridge is only lukewarm.