What are the defining characteristics of us Brits? Well, self-deprecating humour, certainly.  A predisposition to understatement, perhaps. A love of the quirky and eccentric, unquestionably.

Charlie Connelly is definitely British. He’s obsessed with the shipping forecast on Radio 4, for goodness sake. 

He listens to it every day and wrote a book about it in 2004. Eccentric? You bet. And now he’s produced a show, Attention All Shipping: A Celebration of The Shipping Forecast, which he brought to The Lights in Andover last Tuesday. 

Now, loving the shipping forecast is one thing – it’s soothing, poetic, comfortingly familiar, and charmingly understated. But can you make it into an entertaining show?

Well, as it happens, Charlie can, and if you’re prepared to embrace his nerdy eccentricity, there’s something in there for you, too. So long as you’re British, that is.

The Lights Andover The Lights Andover (Image: Newsquest) The first half of the show is all about Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, the captain of H.M.S. Beagle when it took Darwin on his famous voyage. He’s also the man who invented the shipping forecast which, according to Charlie, is the greatest invention of the modern era because, he says, it has saved untold lives. Really, Charlie? What about the seat belt, the cardiac pacemaker, the polio vaccine?  Nevertheless, FitzRoy is Charlie’s darling, and he tells us all about him……well, let’s say there was more than enough detail.

The second half of the show, though, got down to the real nitty gritty. Charlie’s made it his mission to visit all 31 sea areas named in the shipping forecast – only a proper British Charlie would do that - from Viking, via Thames, FitzRoy (Aha!  You knew you’d heard that name somewhere, didn’t you?) and all the way up to Southeast Iceland, and boy has he had some adventures on the way. 

He’s visited the independent principality of Sealand, been accused of trying to annex Rockall, visited the most boring town in the world, while also finding time to go into the studio and watch Corrie Corfield reading the shipping forecast, before contriving with her very nearly to precipitate a nuclear catastrophe (it’s a long story). It’s fun, silly, surprisingly educational and made me vicariously proud to be British.

So, if you can put on your British stiff upper lip and weather the storm of the first half of the gig, I think you’ll find this show is a 7, occasionally 8, moderate becoming good later.  Rule Britannia!

  • This review was written by Chris Parkinson-Brown