Review: Paul Taylor’s ‘F*** Me I’m French’ Comes to Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco

With over 330,000 YouTube subscribers and 28 million views, something tells me that people love the comedy of Paul Taylor. He says, “I make fun of French people and they love it. Or they tell me to f*** off back to my country.”

That country is the U.K., but he currently lives in France with his French wife and young daughter.

During my recent visit to Paris, my friends told me they had gone to one of his bilingual English-French comedy shows in Toulouse and enjoyed it. When they told me that his current tour included a stop in San Francisco, I knew I had to check it out!

After work on a Thursday, my husband and I set off to the sold-out 400-seat capacity Cobb’s Comedy Club, located in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. As we were enjoying some buttery garlic fries, a salty soft pretzel, and a couple of cold Belgian-style pilsners, the opening act came out. Her name was Jill (whose last name I didn’t catch, unfortunately!) and she shared her witty observations and experience of being a (peri)menopausal woman, wife, and mother in her fifties. As I am at the same stage in life, I could identify and she had me in stitches!

After about 15 minutes, she introduced Paul Taylor, who emerged from behind the curtain that was lit up to resemble the French flag. He was wearing all black, sipping an amber-hued beverage from a glass, and holding a children’s book. He greeted us with a spirited “Hello, San Francisco!” then asked if there were any French people in attendance.

Based on the applause, nearly 80 percent of the audience was French.

The show is called “F*** Me I’m French” so naturally I expected many expletives and explicit content, but I was surprised that it wasn’t like that at all. Instead, he shared mostly G-rated, or modest anecdotes. For example, he shared his feeling of insecurity when some people left his show in Orlando, Florida because they had mistakenly bought tickets to see Paul Taylor, the American contemporary jazz musician who happens to be touring the U.S. at the same time.

I won’t give away too much, but I have to share my favorite parts! For instance, I enjoyed the bit where he explained one (x-rated) reason why the Disney character we know and love as “Moana” in the U.S. is called “Vaiana” in Europe. Having been to Disneyland Paris recently, I’m glad he talked about it because I did notice that Moana merch went by a different name there and I wondered why! (Read about my trip to Disneyland Paris here.)

Another favorite part of mine was when he talked about how he enlisted the help of his “Irish mother to help scare off” some young people knocking on his door late one night.

He also spoke in many accents, which were amusing, spot-on, and well-received by speakers-of-languages-other-than-English who were in the room. My use of multiple hyphens here reminds me of Taylor’s penchant for calling multihyphenated French city names as “sh*thole places” (with the exception of Aix-en-Provence, he added, likely to spare the feelings of the audience member who said she was from the fancy town in southern France!)

He then played songs from an English language children’s book voiced by speakers with thick French accents, toward which he simultaneously poked fun and expressed endearment.

Overall, I enjoyed the show. Paul Taylor spoke about his often-relatable feeling of having an identity crisis that results from having to navigate multiple languages, countries, and cultures. He seems to suggest that embracing and finding the humor in one’s multiple identities are effective ways to handle it. Knowing when to use a particular accent in certain situations doesn’t seem to hurt either!

Visit Paul Taylor’s website for upcoming tour dates: Paul Taylor Comedy

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