Our look back at the Edinburgh Fringe of 2008

Our journey through Fringes past today takes us to 2008: the year David O’Doherty won the main comedy award, and someone named Sarah Millican blew all away with her Fringe debut. Here are just a few of Chortle editor Steve Bennett’s reviews from that year’s festival.

Sarah Millican's Not Nice

Sarah Millican may look quite sweet, and she certainly sounds that way… but as this show’s title gives away, that’s an utterly deceptive image.

She’s not nice two ways: because she is, in her own words, ‘a bit of a cow’, and because her material can be utterly filthy. Her lilting North East accent sugar-coats everything from sex toys to coprophilia, giving an illusion of gentle charm to the crudest of material.

But these are not subjects anyone brings up immediately, so this Edinburgh debutante builds to them gradually. She opens with a couple of dubious taste gags to test the water, but the real start is the tried-and-tested – and much less offensive - material about her divorce that she’s been honing over her three years on the circuit. The vivid pictures she paints of the pain, unsalved by her father’s casual doom-mongering, bring a hefty dose of reality to her jokes.

And, my, has she got jokes. Tim Vine aside, she surely has one of the highest gags-per-minute counts on the Fringe, with punchlines arriving every few beats with unwavering punctually. The effect of such a onslaught is irresistible, and laughs come thick and fast.

It doesn’t take long to head below the belt, which is where we reside for most of the hour. Her material is, in a way, almost blokeish, with its ceaseless references to bad sex and masturbation. This sounds like the recipe for obvious knob-gag comedy, but Millican has a frank, self-effacing manner and an obtuse approach to writing that avoids the clichés and refreshes the genre.

She quizzes the audience about their sex lives, about whether they employ food, talking dirty or dressing up – and is greeted by either coy reticence or, more worryingly, an overenthusiastic volunteering of information. But she rolls with what’s thrown at her, and never lets the show go off track.

Although she has a generally unromantic view of relationships, of children, and of life itself, a note of optimism – albeit pragmatic optimism - does emerge at the end, as she concedes that she is happy in her new relationship.

It all adds to the feeling that her stand-up is based on real experiences, not contrived for the sake of a gag. It’s how she avoids clichés, and stays likeable, all contributing to what is an impressive, and consistently funny, festival debut.

And here she is performing in Chortle's Fast Fringe this year..

Chortle Student Comedy Award Final

Not the full review, but there were a couple of notable participants this year…

Chris Ramsey was first out the blocks after the break, with a rather straightforward stand-up set. A couple of jokes drawn broadly from the news were strung out a bit, with too much with set-up, and when you’ve acknowledged the audience have jumped ahead to the punchline, you can skip forward a bit. But he has a very appealing style to him, and perhaps the perfectly engineered club joke, fusing what are surely the two most popular topics in comedy to form one meta-gag about Star Wars AND paedophilia.

Simon Bird has a feigned unshakeable arrogance, which he brilliantly exploited with a magnificently imaginative set, especially written for the occasion and skilfully undermining every aspect of it. Bird’s entered this competition for four years running, accumulating a chequered track record which he beautifully described, employing a subtle command of the language. Manipulating the occasion to his own end and emotionally blackmailing the judges proved a coruscating display of postmodernist comedy. Brilliant stuff, which earned him second place – and a vast amount of respect.

Jon Brittain had a very assured delivery, too, with some smart material about Catholicism and sex education. However, he lost the intellectual high ground a bit with the enthusiastic description of possible penises for his pre-op friend. Overall, it’s a solid starting point, but his set feels as if it needs a bit more time to gestate.

Brittain is now a playwright, who got great reviews for his show Rotterdam, has written on The Crown and directed live shows including  Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho, Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer and both of John Kearns's award-winning shows. Yet for all the future stars on display this year, the winner – Jack Heal - has barely been heard of since.

Two Episodes Of MASH Present Joe Wilkinson and Diane Morgan

Quirky duo Joe Wilkinson and Diane Morgan don’t want to let on that they’ve put any effort at all into their oddly-named sketch show, shuffling about the room as they mutter lines so lazily that some are lost even in this tiny venue. It’s as if they’re already bored with the whole tedious rigmarole of performing – an ennui that soon spreads around the audience, too.

The night, announced as ‘11 sketches and then we go home’, is a hit-and-miss affair. But even the hits really only have one great line around which the whole scenario hangs; which makes for a very sluggish hour.

On the few occasions the script does work, such as the opening sketch about a man who’s lost his falcon, it’s because an unexpected line swings in from nowhere and flips the scene on its head. There are fleeting moments of such brilliance throughout the hour, but nowhere near enough.

But equally often the duo rely on the easy surrealism of the meaningless non-sequiteur; putting semi-random words and unfashionable celebrities together in the vain hope of hitting gold, or hope that a bizarre scenario alone is enough for laughs.

Their slow, deadpan approach works occasionally, such as the human cannonball who is as jaded with his job as any 9-to-5er, but there’s not enough variation in their energy levels across the sketches. Every character seems bored.

Still, that’s no excuse for the ignorant, ill-mannered knuckle-dragger who thought he’d help by loudly proclaiming: ‘I think you’re rubbish, mate’ mid-sketch, with what aim in mind, who knows? But Wilkinson handled the situation skilfully, diffusing the awkward atmosphere rather than escalating it.

Both he and Morgan, who are interesting and offbeat stand-ups in their own right, are clearly trying to present something a bit different here, and occasionally they do hit home. But they don’t seem to have considered thoroughly enough how the audience will react to 60 minutes of low-energy presentation in an airless cellar Josef Fritzl would be proud of.

Susan Calman: Maybe It Is Your Fault

A comic says funny things, so the maxim goes, whereas a true comedian says things funny. Well, Susan Calman’s firmly in the latter camp.

Beyond the first few minutes, when she’s extra keen to make a good impression, you’d be hard pressed to find too many hard-and-fast jokes in this feisty Glaswegian’s debut. But she shares her often-selfish opinions and everyday stories from her life with such animated good humour, that she charms you into laughing.

The easier gags come at the expense of her height – she’s a mere 4ft 11in – but the wit comes more from her effortless, self-effacing honesty combined with her hugely expressive delivery.

The premise is that people should take more responsibility for their actions. An obvious enough standpoint, but one from which she soon wanders, talking about all manner of things from her grandmother’s dreams of being a film star (unlikely for an ordinary looking woman from a rough part of Glasgow), to schoolday memories; from women who hide food from themselves to the age-old staple of rows with the girlfriend.

The idea of losing some of your identity within a relationship is well-covered, but Calman illustrates it in her very personal, very peculiar way: all she wants is to be able enjoy the simple pleasure of chicken in a white sauce, which she cannot do in the presence of her strictly vegetarian partner.

Calman’s stories really are that mundane, but the way she tells them with wide-eyed enthusiasm and pacy delivery proves infectious, even in a sluggish mid-afternoon slot.

Ivan Brackenbury's Hospital Radio Christmas Show

The joy of the Edinburgh Fringe is the vast artistry of comedy, showing the genre can move you, inform you and stun you. But very few shows offer quite as much ridiculously enjoyable fun as inept hospital radio DJ Ivan Brackenbury.

These may seem the wrong words to describe the clumsy, misguided character; but his second Fringe outing is sharper, more knowing and more imaginative even that his award-nominated debut.

The format has changed only subtly, but enough to offer more variety in style and pace. This is still the same cheerfully ‘bonkers’ presenter so unknowingly incompetent that every dedication he plays for those ailing in Chesterfield And North Derbyshire Hospital is crassly, brilliantly inappropriate.

It generates plenty of sick jokes, each track played just long enough for realisation of the unfortunate lyrics to settle, before we zip on to the next. Possibly wary of criticism – Chortle’s included – that this trick meant the show was essentially the same joke repeated over an hour, Brackenbury’s creator Tom Binns has added more between-record banter, allowing for the plentiful jokes to hit you from more unexpected directions, and it’s these lines tend to be the best. The over-reliance on cut-and-shut jingles, his name inexpertly inserted into genuine radio station idents, is also cut back.

The result is a stronger, more vibrant show. Brackenbury’s inane enthusiasm gets the audience going, too, with all the cheap tricks he can muster, including distributing Christmas goodies around the crowd. You’d think they were in a real radio roadshow the way they holler on cue. Indeed, when he announces that we’re going to link up with the studio ‘live at 5’ you see people check their watches, as if there was a real studio to link to.

It’s the only time they do check their watches, however, as the hour zings by, with gags stumbling over each other to get out. The only time they stop is to allow for the gales of laughter to subside.

Like Les Dawson’s piano-playing, Brackenbury’s incompetence stems from Binns knowing exactly how to put together a genuine, slick radio broadcast. The music gives the show huge wells of energy, the jingles sound authentic – and he’s even hired the X-Factor voiceover man to record them.

With his exaggerated, brightly-coloured appearance, Brackenbury looks like one of those people you see on Red Nose Day and aren’t sure if they’re fundraiser or beneficiary. But he joshes with the artifice of character comedy, pointing out that he’s not a real person, larking around with the sound effects when he has to ring someone, and making knowing reference to the fact the show has a story arc, like proper one-man shows. Not that such flimsy plot adds much substance to the show, which is simple a never-ending bombardment of great gags.

There’s a least six genuinely sublime lines here, and scores more great ones, all sharp, brisk, and inevitably medically fixated. This hospital radio broadcast is definitely worth tuning in to, it’s far more entertaining than the real thing could ever be.

Published: 15 Aug 2020