Despite the title, Worst German Ever made it clear that Paco Erhard wants to be friends. Over the course of an hour, Erhard built an impression of himself as a friendly, rational guy who can see the world’s a fairly wonky place.
Having left Germany in his late teens, Erhard’s been based in London for the last decade. Thanks to comedy, he’s travelled far across the globe and collected plenty of useful insight along the way. Worst German Ever looked at various areas of contemporary life that are particularly wonky; namely, the inanity of racism, the hypocrisy of religious discrimination and the absurdity of ultra-conservative moral panic. Erhard emphasised how fuckwits all around the world (the Australian variant being the bogan) propagate such stupidity that tends to spoil things for the rest of us rational, friendly folks.
He also made a point of acknowledging the grave missteps of his native land in the name of nationalism. On this last point – yes Holocaust references – Erhard leaned a little too heavily. It’s not that he scraped awkwardly close to the politically incorrect bone (though, perhaps proud Germans or Jews would say otherwise). It was more a case of, yeah we get it, World War II sucked and don’t Germans just know it, but repeatedly bringing it up doesn’t necessarily make for good comic banter.
But Erhard’s a nice guy, and he wanted to make sure we knew that. He’s also a very physically engaging comic – his eyes practically popped out of his head whenever he reached a punchline, which in itself was massively amusing.
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
