A look back at the Edinburgh Fringe of 2010

2010 was the year that Russell Kane took the Edinburgh Comedy Award with his Smokescreens And Castles show, reflecting on the overwhelming influence of his father on his life, for good and bad. Kane beat a strong field to the title, with Bo Burnham, Greg Davies, Josie Long  and  Sarah Millican also all nominated – and Rosin Conaty taking the newcomer crown. Here are some of Chortle editor Steve Bennett’s reviews from what now seems like a vintage Fringe year…

Greg Davies: Firing Cheeseballs At A Dog

The perceived wisdom is that to have a hit Edinburgh show, comedians need to add depth and meaning to their stand-up, with powerful stories revealing deep truths about the human condition.

Greg Davies not only sticks two fingers up to that convention, but waves them around in your stupid face, making fart sounds and dancing a jaunty jig as he does so. This a collection of autobiographical anecdotes that he is proud to boast are both ‘free of consequence and devoid of meaning’, delivered with unquashable, infectious glee.

The gaps left where that consequence and meaning should be are, instead, filled with laughs. Big, hearty, carefree laughs of uncomplicated enjoy-the-moment fun that ensure you leave the gig in a much higher spirits than you entered it. That’s far more important than any message.

It’s more than a little ironic that you learn nothing, given that Davies spent 13 years as a teacher – a real, if ineffectual, one, not the one he plays in The Inbetweeners. But he never really grew up into the authority role, as his routines here teasing his young charges and highlighting their strange behaviour is remarkably similar in tone to the segment describing his own schooldays, full of juvenile nicknames and the cry of ‘chinny reck-on!’.

Even as a full-grown 6ft 8in adult, is happily pathetic, making himself the butt of jokes while describing how he can amuse himself with such simple pleasures as the one described in the show’s quirky title. Some of the spontaneous moments he recalls with such joy are so brief and random, he can’t fit them into even the loose narrative of this show, so he writes them in a Book Of Pithy Tales, providing the briefest, but beautifully obtuse, punctuation to the autobiographical chapters.

For all the merriment from his past, though, the most fun comes from his parents – his prudish middle England mum and his ‘dangerously mental’ dad who, at 70, has decided to embrace the idea that he’s old enough to do what he damn well feels, and hang the consequences. Davies Snr’s ill-advised recklessness is matched only by his son’s skills in repeating the stories.

For all his protestations, there is actually a message here – and it’s the very simple one of savouring every moment that makes you happy, however stupid. This ultimate feelgood show is so jam-packed with such moments, you’d be a fool to miss it.

Bo Burnham: Words, Words, Words

Don’t they grow up fast these days? It seems like only yesterday that Bo Burnham was the awkward, geeky fresh-faced teenager distributing the comic songs he made in his bedroom over YouTube.

But after the lo-fi videos went pandemic, he’s now an official big deal, with a Judd Apatow movie in the works and an Edinburgh show that one’s of the best in the programme.

He’s a renaissance man of comedy; singing, rapping, delivering exquisite one-liners, performing snapshot theatre pieces, reciting poetry and even haikus. He wears his prodigious talent with petulance, surly with well-placed confidence, yet still happy to expose himself as a self-loathing comic with an all-consuming neediness.

His background may lie in musical comedy, but he easily proves he’s just as inventive off keyboard. Acapella raps are layered with gags upon gags, innuendo is delivered in pun-riddled pentameter and he can coin aphorisms that will have the editors of books of quotations reaching for their overtime forms. Occasionally he has to take his foot off the genius pedal to give us time to appreciate the dense wit he fires out, yet still you have to concentrate to catch every throwaway line.

The sharp humour rewards a little knowledge, but still leaves no punter behind, with quickfire jokes about quantum physics, Greek philosophers and Salvador Dali among others. Precocious? Yes… but how many 19-year-olds do you know who can take on Shakespeare and win? Willie got pwned.

The songs are brisk and as quip-packed as you might expect, and even when you think you’re on familiar territory – the boastful rap or the tongue-in-cheek allusion to Alanis Morissette’s rightly maligned Ironic – the writing is so smart it remains full of surprises.

This is a scrapbook of a show, fragments of all manner of comic techniques included, but always the very best examples of each style. Burnham has no overarching approach or big message. The only thing he really proves is that, like the gay otter in his uncanny hip-hop spoof, he ‘blows other guys out of the water’. Catch him before he’s in the arenas.

Russell Kane: Smokescreens & Castles

This is the show when Russell Kane finally comes of age, releasing all the potential he’s ever been credited with into one dense, smart, funny and honestly personal examination of his proud working-class family, warts and all.

Gone – well almost – is the empty posturing and the kneejerk chip-on-the-shoulder depiction of middle-class pretension, despite his apparent desire to join that club. Instead the intense focus of his intelligent wit has been turned, for the most part, on to his tough-guy father, a thick-necked white van man for whom emotion is a sign of weakness. You would have to have lived a very rarefied existence not to know, or be related to, a bloke like this.

The castle is a metaphor for the thick, cold walls dad Dave built around his heart, beyond the usual ‘Englishman’s home’ analogy – although that applies, too, as Kane Snr was the only one on his Enfield council estate to buy his house when the Thatcher regime allowed it, instantly setting him apart from his neighbours, who despised him for it.

Inspired by the same significant family event that’s prompted a few recent Edinburgh shows from male comics in their thirties, Kane tries to understand his father’s racist, homophobic views, petty resentments and emotional detachment. As a liberal, arts graduate with a thirst for knowledge and a love of drama, Kane was obviously a worry to his polar-opposite father, who inevitably suspected his offspring could be gay. The nightmare scenario…

Kane’s ideological clashes with his father provide some of the best moments here; including an inspired routine about the right-wingers who deny all evidence of climate change on a point of principle.

But his dad provides only one aspect of the working-class archetype Kane delves into. The other – the effervescent enjoyment of life in the moment, putting your family first and your friends almost as close – is epitomised by his mother and, of a fashion, his formidable grandmother in a routine that contains the most beautifully onomatopaeic use of the c-word.

Then there’s what surely must be the best routine on sociocultural linguistics this Fringe. Top five at least. This is his insightful theory about how the Essex accent informs the attitude, or vice-versa, comparing it to other regional brogues and traits.

Add to this tales of a fight in a curry house, the story of how Kane sustained possibly the most middle-class motoring injury possible (it involves a Toyota Prius and a Trollope audiobook), his theories on sex education and the rise of the BNP, and a measured level of audience teasing and you’ve got a jam-packed show, even by the fast-talking comic’s usual standards.

That’s really the only criticism, that the intense show does feel a bit rushed – and Kane admitted he was editing out a few routines as the hour deadline loomed. Some of these ideas need a little more room to breathe – which presumably they’ll get when Smokescreens And Castles goes on tour this autumn.

But this is a hugely impressive show, full of ideas and performed with an irresistible vigour, marking a quantum leap for a comic powering towards the top of his game.

Sarah Millican: Chatterbox

‘I don’t know why I’m telling you lot this…’ says Sarah Millican at one point in her effortlessly breezy hour. This might be a touch disingenuous, for the answer is surely that it’s in the set list she goes through night after night – but the phrase perfectly captures both the indiscretion and unaffectedly friendliness that are the hallmarks of this accomplished comedian.

She’ll talk about intimate anatomy as readily as she’ll talk about biscuits, just as long as she’s talking. She’s a gossipy aunt, a domestic everywoman who shops at M&S and vegges out in front of the telly suddenly given the opportunity to speak, and not quite having the right filter to decide what is and isn’t appropriate.

She makes plenty of self-deprecating comments about how her love of cakes makes her fat and unattractive. Unlike Jo Brand’s excursions into similar territory, there’s no hint of bitterness, but more of a celebratory tone. Boy comics might boast of their alcohol intake, Millican takes pride in being described (by Russell Kane) as a ‘cake pigeon’ who can’t pass a bakery without cooing.

The warmth of the delivery – and undoubtedly the soft North-Eastern accent – ensure that what might be considered filth in some comics’ hands is simply incorrigibly naughty here. And such candour helps the audience open up too, and the banter is free-flowing on both sides.

It gives the impression that this show is simply a conversation writ large. That may be the usual style for most 20-minute club sets. but many comics struggle to do the same over an hour. For Millican it comes naturally. She doesn’t need big themes or structural skeletons to hold her show together, just her assured writing with its perfectly-expressed thoughts and ideas gelling into piquant jokes. Simple!

Hannah Gadsby: The Cliff Young Shuffle 

It wouldn’t be too unkind to suggest that Hannah Gadsby is not the perfect specimen for most physical activities. An overweight drinker prone to injury, she spends much of this show making cruel jibes at the expense of her own body.

Nonetheless, and for no good reason, she decided to tackle Wainwright’s coast-to-coast walk across England. Without training, or any real sense of what the trek would entail, she donned her brand new hiking boots and set off shuffling morosely across 300km of bleak countryside, hating every painful step.

However, what she might have lacked in grace on the Yorkshire fells, she more than makes up for with the construction of this elegant hour, full of incisive self-doubt and witheringly witty putdowns for the fellow walkers who irritated her so much. Exercise might not be her forte, but she did excel in one activity among the English world champions – whinging.

The show is named after a 64-year-old potato farmer whose slow-and-steady approach allowed him to win a race between Melbourne and Sydney, simply by not quitting, not even to sleep. Despite that inspirational ‘tortoise and the hare’ story, Gadsby hated every step, and didn’t understand why she was putting herself through such a miserable challenge. Only a tenuous bond with a similarly grumpy walker kept her going.

But to think this is a story about fellwalking is to think Animal Farm is about cute talking pigs. It’s about mental health, about the difference between depression and despair, about what happens when the mind breaks down, frozen with indecision, and the strange processes and slightest human interactions that can get it going again. You can see why she didn’t mention that on the poster.

Though frank about her own problems in this area, Gadsby dexterously keeps the tone light. This subject, though usually only an undercurrent, gives what in any case would have been an absorbing, entertaining yarn an added dimension.

But that’s only incidental to the funnies, which stem from mainly her mean-spirited bitchiness, directed at both herself and others. She doesn’t come off as the best person in all of this, but she does come across as brutally honest. Combine that with a yarn made compelling in the hands of an expert storyteller, and you’ve got one hell of an entertaining hit.

Roisin Conaty: Hero, Warrior, Fireman, Liar

Like a lot of comedians, Roisin Conaty was the weirdo outsider at school, a painfully uncommunicative creep unable to make friends. In the 15 or so years since those difficult teenage years in County Kerry, she’s certainly learned a thing or two, because as a stand-up her greatest assets are her easy charm and innate likeability.

So she spends most of her best newcomer-wining show telling us about embarrassing incidents when she acted like a klutz, but delivery with such a lack of awkwardness that she can now successfully ‘own’ the shame. She still stuffs up some social situations – when trying to chat up a boy she fancies or attempting to convince herself she’s still attuned to today’s youth, not some grown-up square – but on stage, she’s a natural.

A misplaced boastfulness of youth is, in fact, one of her favourite comic devices, using such phrases as ‘Yeah, I said it!’ that might sound swaggeringly rebellious in her head, however inappropriate it is. It’s a common trick among mild-mannered stand-ups, but Conaty never makes it sound forced. Another trick is to say something incorrectly, then riff off the mistake. Whether this is pre-planned or not, it’s impossible to tell, as it all fits seamlessly into that open conversational style.

The show is framed by the idea that she has been invited back to her old school to share all the wisdom she’s acquired since, causing her to conclude that the sum of all her knowledge isn’t all that great. It’s not exactly high concept, but allows her to fit just about any topic in, though some of the less personal material doesn’t resonate as much as the moments when she’s revealing something of herself.

For that reason, and others, her character turn that opens the hour is a limited success. Jackie Hump is an angst-ridden poet with overblown verse and overemphasised mime. Such earnest performers are a much-mocked target – and she’s certainly no Paul Hamilton – although the caterwauled song Our Love Is Like Monopoly has some good lines. The creation is carried – just about – because Conaty never accepts how truly ridiculous what she is doing looks.

Her greatest strength is her personality and willingness to look the fool, however incredible that would have sounded to the 15-year-old freak she once was.

Bridget Christie: A Ant

You’ve heard of anti-comedians; now welcome the first anty-comedian.

Anyone seriously into their comedy simply has to witness the first few minutes of Bridget Christie’s show, as she takes to the stage as a stand-up who just happens to be an insect. Infuriated by the hackneyed Ant Music walk-on track her technician plays, she launches into a furious diatribe about how she’s pigeonholed by her phylum, not by her comedy.

Even more funny is to watch her die on her thorax. The majority of the audience gaze on baffled as the subtext and fantastic industry in-jokes go sailing over their heads, wondering what madness they have just spent £8 on.

Christie has spent most of her career on such artistic indulg-ants (sorry but the pained puns she insists on are infectious); raiding the dressing-up box and doing odd things for her own amusement, no matter what the audience reaction. But now a mother, needing to feed and clothe a toddler, she’s reluctantly come to the conclusion she need to be more accessible if she’s ever to earn a crust at comedy. Thus she sheds her antennae to launch into more conventional stand-up banter.

Even so, she seems in constant battle with the crowd, who don’t always buy into her stories about living in North London’s most liberal enclave of Stoke Newington with a grumpy husband and a cat she wanted to call Alan Palmer. Political stuff, seems an especially tough sell, as she forces ahead with Nick Clegg for selling out to the Tories and gets angry with author Toby Young about the free school he wants to set up in West London. She can assume too much knowledge of her audience, leaving them struggling to catch up, while her commentary on how she perceives the gig to be going maintains the a division between performer and observer, however good-naturedly she picks at it.

But there are some quirkily funny ideas and ambitious concepts here, especially the elegant mega-callbacks concerning Andrew Lloyd Webber and his Wikipedia page. And for all the struggle, the audience do warm to her. When she seems ready to abandon her plan to revive the ant for the epilogue, fearing the gig has been a disaster, spontaneous and heartfelt calls of ‘ant, ant, ant!’ go up. We like her, even if we sometimes find her challenging

The Fringe is a better place for having Christie on it, her bold show bringing a genuine touch of the alternative to an increasingly safe landscape. Even if the ride is still too bumpy for an outright recommendation, this show is the surest sign yet that she isn’t destined to remain condemned as ‘interesting’ rather than ‘funny’, as her finest moments hit highs of genuine brilliance.

• Click here for all our 2010 Edinburgh Fringe reviews

Published: 18 Aug 2020