Review: Steve-O @ Coalition

Steve-O’s Entirely Too Much Information Tour - Coalition 7th November 2011

You just can’t live like Steve-O did through the last decade – not for long anyway. Arrested for stapling his balls to his leg, urinating on crisps and possession of drugs – his self-destructive streak spread way beyond his criminal record and his professional pain for Jackass and Wildboyz. A drug problem persuaded Johnny Knoxville and friends to have him sectioned, something that seems to have set him on the right road – albeit one that has left him a tea-total vegan. Yes, really.

But any ideas that he’s boring are soon put to bed. Steve-O is crazier sober than most people are wasted. You wonder why he ever drank. This visit to the Coalition is on his debut stand-up tour. Well, we say stand-up, he’s more or a raconteur than a gagsmith. But when you’ve lived the life he has you’ve got plenty of personal material to draw on.

There are virtually none of his stories that we can repeat on this family website, but his startlingly honest tales cover whether his behaviour with Jackass star Chris Pontius is gay (we’d say, yeah, definitely), his love of porn and some of the shocking things that have happened to him during sex.

“That was the second most disgusting thing to happen to me in an intimate encounter,” he says after one foul tale. “This is the worst – and you're not going to like it.”

The crowd indeed let out a groan at the gross reveal and, in fact, they’re in palm of his hand all night. At least most of them are. Devoted fans, many feel that Steve-O is one of the boys and engage in conversation throughout, like it’s a Q&A session rather than a routine. That might be because he’s so easy going onstage – like he’s holding court at a party. He handles it pretty well and by the end it settles into chants of "Steve O, Steve-O..." and "Love you Steve-O!" mostly when Jackass is mentioned.

At his best when he’s self-deprecating (he admits that he was in a psychiatric ward with Mike Tyson for example), he’s got a great turn of phrase and is full of charm, even when describing behaviour you’d not normally applaud.

“Of course I'm going to hurt myself,” he says as his stand-up comes to an end and squeezes a whole lemon into his eye. His acrobatic drinking of a glass of water balanced on his forehead (“Pilates,” he admits) is topped only by him setting his head on fire before engulfing it in a fireball.

But despite the spectacle it’s his stand-up that most interesting. We look forward to the point when Steve-O doesn’t feel like he has to hurt himself to entertain us. He’s better than that.

Words & Pictures by James Kendall

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Date: Monday 14th November 2011