One of my favourite things about hitting Vault Festival on a Sunday is the fact that the entire venue seemingly comes out of nowhere. One minute you are in a dead part of London with very little going on then suddenly you turn one little corner and it’s graffiti, gigs and good times ahead.

This was our first visit to the Vaults of 2020 and it was great to discover the new Souk (Rose Bar) and the addition of board games to the cocktail loft. One novel game about building bus routes – and a few too many drinks for a Sunday – later and we were off to our show, Two Vegan Idiots.

As we were filing in a getting settled Carl believed that he had clocked a reviewer in the back – “bulky, bald bastard with a full on notebook” – and he, and Julian, questioned why anyone would review a show of two idiots chatting shit. The man in the back wasn’t actually us but we’ll have a crack at answering the question anyway. Basically we have a tonne of time for Carl Donnelly, we enjoy spontaneous banter between clowns and we’ve never reviewed a live podcast before. We had a sneaky feeling that combining these three things might be fun and dammit we were right.

The guest on stage for the evening was Canadian clown John Hastings who, as it turns out, genuinely does have a massive head – honestly he could be a stunt double for the cast of Attack on Titan! – and with our clowns all in place the show slowly came to be.

The unusual thing for us about watching a podcast recording is that it really is just a chat between mates. The conversation jumped from childhood run-ins with the police to taking mushrooms at a wedding. In fact, apart from the snacks (cheers guys, still can’t believe jam doughnuts are vegan!) there was very little food chat at all, just in case anyone had mistaken this for a cooking show.

In terms of a review the content really is irrelevant as no two of these shows will ever be even remotely the same – It’s all about our host clowns and the tone they set. On this evening Carl and John did most of the talking but Julian’s contributions were razor sharp. The chat flowed like a good conversation down the pub and the audience were always a part of the show.

At the end of the day we laughed a lot and we found two more clown’s whose solo shows we’d like to try and catch. Who says you don’t get any benefit from going vegan eh!

Clown Stars: (-unrated-)

@The Vaults – London