We look back at The Wrestling, and other highlights from the 2011 Fringe

Our nostalgia trip to Fringes past pulls in to 2011 today, the year Adam Riches won the main Edinburgh Comedy Award and Humphrey Ker won best newcomer in a crowded field, which included seven other nominees. Meanwhile, the panel prize went to the extravaganza that was The Wrestling. Here are some of Chortle editor Steve Bennett’s reviews from that year….

The Wrestling

Only in Edinburgh.

Max Olesker, of sketch duo Max and Ivan, decided he wanted to stage a real night of wrestling, in which genuine hardmen, built like brick shithouses, would share the ring with comedians, built like Wendy houses. And, in his words, ‘Somehow this has been allowed to happen.’

It was an audacious plan with every possibility of being a chaotic disaster – both metaphorically and physically – with 15 comedy acts joining wrestlers with names like Dan ‘The Hammer’ Head and Johnny Moss ‘245lbs of invincible muscle’, despite having little time to prepare. Never has the Fringe’s ‘let’s do this thing’ spirit been so sorely tested – and come up so triumphantly.

Most of the comics were, sensibly, used as managers, valets, ring announcers and the like in this battle of good versus evil – but that didn’t mean they escaped being in harm’s way.

On the side of the good, led by Bible-bashing Russell Kane, we had Mark Watson, Patrick Monahan dressed like Freddie Mercury, Abandoman rapping the entrance for wrestler Mark Haskins and Colin Hoult as The Mighty Thwor, God Of Thunder – or was it just a nutter from Leeds?

On the side of evil, led by Adam Riches, was Humphrey Ker, a Nazi Bruiser nicknamed the Vinyl Solution; Tom ‘Explosenthal’ Rosenthal, dressed as a gimp; Jessica Ransom as a brilliantly deranged Russian mother, and a rather underused Rich Fulcher, boasting he had ‘more money than Jesus’s cock’.

Nick Helm was the perfect choice as the rasping, brusque MC; Matthew Crosby the roving reporter, bringing witty pre-match excitement from the lengthy queues outside as well as in the room itself; and Frisky & Mannish providing first-rate halftime entertainment, with a stirring version of Eye Of The Tiger given their own genre-bending twist.

Key to getting the atmosphere going were Andrew Maxwell and Brendon Burns commentating ringside on the side of good and evil respectively. If there’s a rabble to be roused, you couldn’t do much better than these two. Being a comedy crowd, the instinct was to go with the heels, but Maxwell, spouting delightfully pious aphorisms, rallied the sold-out 770-strong crowd with the unlikely chant: ‘Fair play and decency!’ and we swung on to the righteous path.

To a person, the mob brought into the idea; and for a shade under two hours yelled their support, booed the bad guys and aaa-hed every bone-crunching move. It’s impossible to describe the pumped-up atmosphere, but there’s not been a febrile, feral blood lust like this since the old Late And Live – but this time the threat of death was less metaphorical.

The wrestlers didn’t hold back, and the comics threw themselves into it as much as their puny frames would let them. The sight of Rosenthal in tight all-over rubber, gnawing away like a gerbil at his opponent is one that will haunt my dreams for weeks.

Attention-whore Monahan, who couldn’t bear not being the centre of attention, seemed to genuinely annoy one of the men-mountain, who started throwing chairs with apparently real disregard for audience safety, and chased the Geordie comic through the crowd. If the comedy doesn’t work out, Monahan will always have a career as a rodeo clown waiting for him. And his grandstanding antics thoroughly earned him that piledriver. Oh yes, this shit got very real.

Star of the show, though, was Max himself. He was once the youngest professional wrestler in the UK, and although now retired, he proved he’s still got the skills, taking a good old beating, only to make a remarkable comeback in a later bout with a jaw-dropping display of acrobatic talent. He won the day for the side of good (what are the odds?) but not without sacrifice. He ended up in A&E with what’s thought to be a fractured ankle.

But it wasn’t just wrestling, the comedy element lived up to the anticipation, too. With so many competitive, quick-witted performers in the room, the banter sparkled, with ad-libbed hilarious lines being thrown about like… well, like a wimpy comedian in a wrestling ring.

The result was a unforgettable night of guffaws, drama and a genuine fear for the safety of others. Edinburgh has not seen its like before – and when you consider what has happened in this city over the years, that’s quite an achievement. A truly awesome event.

Chris Ramsey: Offermation

Offermation is a neologism meaning information that’s offered without being asked for – comments on YouTube videos being a prime example. So in that spirit, here’s an unsolicited comment on Chris Ramsey’s sophomore show: there’s not very much to it.

Really, it’s just a mild gripe about those annoying round-robin letters full of family news that you get at Christmas, the observation that it can be a bit embarrassing to dine alone, and a story about witnessing a bloke lift some booze off a supermarket shelf and do a runner.

Yet Ramsey imbues each of these slight occurrences with such passion and drama that he convinces you they’re important. Then he can undercut that self-made importance with a comic observation, delivered with passion and infectious, bubbly likeablity.

You could easily argue this is the scourge of modern comedy, of youthful exuberance triumphing over content. Or you could argue that, in fact, this makes him a natural comedian, with funny bones able to make even the mundane hilarious. Given that this show is actually cracking fun, despite the paucity of the raw material, I’d tend towards the second conclusion.

Ramsey is an established circuit act now, and a very strong MC. Offermation is not a show in which he expands on the skills he needs in the clubs, but uses everything within his limitations to produce an hour that’s breathlessly entertaining.

A round-robin letter from distant relatives Bren and Mike that arrives out of the blue one day is the inspiration for the hour; and provides the framing device for other, frankly tenuously linked, chunks from his set. It’s ‘too easy’ to mock the twee language and forced enthusiasm of such annual missives, Ramsey admits, but that’s what he does, reading extracts with sarcasm. However, over the three years, the characters of these people he has never met become more and more defined.

There is, of course, a satisfying payoff to this saga – and Ramsey’s in full flow for the masterful, if entirely contrived, conclusion that spins his initial cynicism on its head. And even though you know the joy is manufactured, you can’t help but fall for it.

It’s all hokum, but good hokum; and probably the perfect second show; reinforcing the promise he showed on his debut last year without any deviation from the style. However by comedy’s rule of three, he’ll really need to surprise us in 2012. Let’s hope so, for when he finds something of substance to sink his teeth into will be the day he becomes truly unmissable.

This show was nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award.

Sara Pascoe vs The Apocalypse

Sara Pascoe opens her show by saying that last year’s Edinburgh hour attracted nine two-star reviews and contained a joke ‘so bad it made the news’; then tells us that she often ends up ploughing gigs into the ground, leaving the audience ‘awkward, disappointed and tense’.

Well, it’s not the end of the world; even if that is the theme of this follow-up, which she gets around to once she’s lowered our expectations.

She was probably right to do so, because she is not a dynamic performer who’s going to wow us with metaphorical fireworks. Her voice is a dry deadpan, the delivery almost soporific and the visuals extend to some hastily home-made PowerPoint slides, largely created by crayon.

The premise is that she is the last woman alive following the 2012 Armageddon supposedly predicted by the Mayans; so she can lay down the rules for the new society. At some point there would need to be other people for this to work, but that point is rather brushed over. However if you come to Pascoe’s world expecting logic, you’ve come to the wrong place.

She has the sort of weird surrealism of Noel Fielding, but whereas he gets excited by the nonsensical ideas he conjures up, she treats them as if they are boring and mundane. Her warped sensibilities are then applied to such pre-apocalyptic problems as pornography objectifying women and the Israeli-Palestine situation and post-apocalyptic problems such as repopulating the planet from a very restricted gene pool.

These are mixed in with her more personal baggage, such as relationship failures, sibling rivalry and all-consuming crush on Dizzee Rascal. The comedy works best when she’s being self-deprecating about herself, which we can identify with, rather than being self-deprecating about the material, which can prompt us to think she might have a point.

As she suggested it might, the show does indeed start to run out steam. But there are some good jokes before we get there, especially when she focus on the vaguely plausible, such as hoodwinking out-of-work actors into becoming teachers, rather than the obviously absurd. That said a mime section where she recreates one-woman versions of plays suggested by the audience – even if she’s never actually seen them – hits paydirt.

As part of the expectation-lowering into, Pascoe said she has at least something for everyone, but that no one will enjoy it all. As assessments go, that seems reasonable enough.

Katherine Ryan: Little Miss Conception

One strand of Katherine Ryan’s debut concerns the awful childhood beauty pageants she competed in back in her native Canadian town of Sarnia – a real place, Google Maps assures me.

Today, performing her show in a turquoise tutu, singing songs in with an self-confessed ‘scratchy voice’, and delivering scatterbrain stand-up in an irritating stage-school style that involves windmilling her arms with such deliberate choreography that it seems like she’s doing semaphore, the instant thought is that she hasn’t moved on much from being that precocious pint-sized show-off.

And blow me if it doesn’t take her a whole freaking hour to get to the same conclusion – and not in a particularly slick way, either. Sure, she has the odd good joke or two, perhaps just enough to scrape together a serviceable 20 minute club set, but as a show it’s a jumbled, self-indulgent triumph of enthusiasm over ability.

The other key strand – or clump might be a better term – of Ryan’s material involves her being a new mum; with some musings on why it’s better to date mums than childless women. There are a few nice lines here, but just as many of the quality: ‘It’s so hard breastfeeding in public… even now I have the baby!’ that should have fallen at the first quality-control hurdle.

The phenomenon of ‘baby brain’ – where pregnancy addles the mind – is scientifically unproven; but Ryan’s unfocussed hour could be used as evidence for that it exists. Her thread gets tangled, and she has a habit of launching into subjects without teeing them up properly, as if we have to know what she’s thinking before she says them.

She describes herself as ‘one of those girls who likes drunk karaoke’, and she certainly has a zest for performing, even if that manifests itself in her gabbling quickly and excitedly. And the three or four songs that punctuate the show certain feed that need to show off – that can surely be the only reason for their inclusion.

On the plus side, there are a few well-made observations, especially one involving an airport bar and another about the exaggerated tourist slogan of Cork, where her father was from. But it’s not enough to save a show that, for want of a better description, is simply ill-conceived.

And where is Katherine Ryan now? Eh? Apart from just about to launch her own Netflix narrative comedy The Duchess on the back of a string of successful stand-up specials…

Josh Widdicombe: If This Show Saves One Life…

As I write this, I’m interrupted by an email that tells me that the Malcolm Hardee awards people have shortlisted Josh Widdicombe for their ‘most likely to make a million quid’ award. It’s a prediction very hard to oppose, for if he can maintain the well-crafted, broad-appeal pedantry of this assured debut, this hangdog youngster, old beyond his years, will surely follow in the footsteps of Michael McIntyre.

His is the brand of observational comedy that’s easy to dismiss, but hard to master, taking a slightly sarcastic look at the world around him and pointing out logical flaws we never saw before. Yes, why IS a gravy boat called that?

His humour largely comes from an intractable logic, that allows him to form comebacks to irritations you never even realised were irritations, from the stupidity of Neighbourhood Watch to the service in Wagamama.

Naff leisure activities seem to be a particularly rich seam. Bowling, LaserQuest, arcade games, Madame Tussauds, narrowboat holidays and visits to the National Railway Museum in York all feature – and all fall short of what Widdicombe wants from his attractions. There seems to be a regret that he has to publically scold them for their unacceptable facets, but standards are standards.

There are some already-classic routines here; his description of Argos Extra is especially fine, revolving around a couple of fantastic jokes. In a packed set, there are a couple of flatter moments, and his collection of tacky souvenirs is overplayed, but he has a winning way with words, and the strike rate is impressively high.

His timing is spot-on, and he has nice banter with the audience, quick-thinking and engaging, but knowing when to stop. It helps counter what could be a smugness to his material, which is never far away but never actually materialises.

Yes, Widdicombe’s safe and mainstream, but he’s very good at it, as his comedy trophy cabinet will attest. Only the most steadfast curmudgeon wouldn’t find something to enjoy in this most promising of debuts.

Do we think he’s made that million quid yet?

• Click here for all our reviews from 2011.

Published: 19 Aug 2020