Justin talks about middle-aged people and getting older

Justin Moorhouse has entered the sixth decade of his life and at 52 has noticed that friends and people he has known for a long time are doing things as older people that seem odd and portend a midlife crisis.

The Phoenix Nights and BBC Five Lives Fighting Talk star was at the Gatehouse Theater in Stafford as part of his Stretch and Think tour to talk about aging and the absurdities it has struck him.

Justin opened the evening with a short set that allowed him to chat with everyone in the front row and chat about their jobs, such as the man who sold solar panels and a couple who had gone to Stafford, to attend the cat show, and then looked for something to do in town and found out he was there.

He also joked that when he was in lockdown during the Covid pandemic he would think of performing live and always had a weird feeling when he thought of Stafford, saying performing there was always something strange.

He then introduced his support act Jim Burke, who continued the evening’s medieval theme with topics such as the differences between him as an 18-year-old and a 59-year-old and feeling unnerved during a prostate exam on the song “Sweetest Feeling” by Jackie Wilson begins to play.

He joked that as a Glaswegian he would receive a telegram from the King to celebrate his 60th birthday and that he hated living in Leeds, saying that the area next to where he lives was like bandit country, somewhere you could it doesn’t. I don’t know where the meat in the meat raffle came from and why it has a Leeds United tattoo.

After a brief hiatus, Justin Moorhouse returned for the core set, which was a tour de force of his thoughts on aging, exploring how people view and view religion, the royal family, presidents and leaders things look older.

Talkative, fast and very quick with a joke, Justin rocked the room with laughter as he talked about a friend he had known since school who suddenly became interested in cycling, including full details of his friend, who squeezed into lycra for the first time.

He even dealt with one person who was heckling from the back of the room and put him in his place with belittling and jokes about his ill-fitting clothes that made people laugh with him.

Talking about age was the show’s main push, with Justin saying that any middle-aged man who thought he was still viable should stop now and admit it’s over and he’s not the hunter-gatherer anymore .

This led to a lively and very funny thread about conception and childbirth before suddenly moving on to dogs and the different breeds you can get these days, with one of the funniest parts being the police dogs all getting back together and one a graying quest dog, another is a lively and noisy drug squad dog and the last one is a fireworks dog that jumps up every time a door closes.

The last part of the show focused on Justin’s father and his final moments, which if taken out of context would be very sad to hear, but Justin shared a story about being at his deathbed and how the conversation turned to food and her to a meal right after his father’s death, which prompted another round of roaring laughter.

The show was a wonderful way to examine middle age and the behavior of middle-aged men and women, and Justin Moorhouse is perhaps one of the best people to describe that.