Our look back at past festivals arrives at 2014

In 2014, John Kearns achieved the unique double of winning the main Edinburgh Comedy Award just 12 months after being  named best newcomer – a title which this year went to Alex Edelman. Meanwhile the anarchic Funz & Gamez won the panel prize. Oh, and also Jim Davidson rocked up at the Fringe. Here are some of Chortle editor Steve Bennett’s reviews from the year...

Funz And Gamez

He describes himself as North Manchester’s ‘most reliable’ comedian, but in Funz And Gamez, Phil Ellis could have finally found the key to much greater things after several Fringe visits. And he’s done it by going into the children’s section of the programme, rather than under ‘comedy’.

Despite that, it’s probably the most talked-about show of the Fringe among comics – and with good reason. There are two shows in one here: on one level it’s a serviceable kids’ show, with songs and games and free sweets. But on the other it’s a parody of poor children’s entertainers, more squarely aimed at adults.

The brilliance is in getting them to work together. You would never put awful creations like Jeremy Lion or Psychoville’s Mr Jelly in front of real children, but Ellis and his compadres entertain the first couple of rows of youngsters as well as the next 12 rows of stand-ups and other cognoscenti. There’s a bit of an imbalance in that respect, and at the start it’s feels annoying when the back rows start guffawing at in-jokes – the show is of the kind attracts a lot of repeat business – but soon everyone’s in on the funz.

Very occasionally the walls between the adult and juvenile sense of humour are breached, with absolutely hilarious effect – parents might need to offer a reassuring word for the most brutal of the ‘life lessons’ offered – but the weaknesses of Ellis’s character don’t bother the kids.

He’s a bitter divorcee who’s got the patter but not the love (nor a house, it appears). He acts as if children are irritants, gingerly throwing Curly Wurlies at them to keep them away once the games are over, like a aircraft emitting anti-missile chaff. He’s competitive too, not for him going easy so the youngsters get a self-esteem rush. Just a sugar one.

Ellis is aided by Bonzo The Dog, a failed actor in shabby dog outfit who provides keyboard accompaniment and sarcastic backchat, and Jim Elf, in a threadbare Christmas outfit, who exists primarily to get bullied by all concerned. And if Ellis is borderline inappropriate, the shifty, shambling, dipsomaniac vagrant Uncle Mick (Ferry) is the whole hog; as is the clown booked to boost proceedings.

There are loads of running gags, quick-witted improvisation and sly character quirks; while all concerned seemed to be having a great time, with a frequent threat of corpsing. It’s that sense of fun which appeals to the young audience, while the insincerity hits the cynical grown-ups, along with the savvy gags that sail right over little heads. The Knockabout jollies are both much cleverer and much more stupid than you might think.

John Kearns: Shtick

It’s proof that the Edinburgh Fringe retains its ability to change lives. After winning the best newcomer gong last year, John Kearns was able to quit his job as a tour guide at the Houses of Parliament and fulfil an ambition he’s spent years trying to achieve. To be called a professional comedian. While last year’s show was born from misery, this is born from that happiness.

But his achievement is tempered with new insecurities. He enjoyed his old job and was good at it, and misses the camaraderie with colleagues now he works alone. The uncertainty of the new troubles him… and he wonders what corner he’s painted into himself into with the brillo-pad tonsure wig and comedy gnashers, which he feels compelled to don again as that’s now his ‘thing’.

The leap into the unknown is worrying for a man who likes his securities; the comfort of visiting his grandmother’s house, the warm nostalgia for youth and the simple pleasures of Paddington Bear. He paints a poignant picture of a odd couple of ‘characters’ in their local pub with a melancholy as world moves on around them, and ultimately without them.

Yet leaping is what comedy is all about; the show is bookended by a recording of Jerry Seinfeld (I think) talking about a joke being a leap onto a moving train, the timing being crucial.

All the above is what Shtick is about; Kearns may adopt the trappings of character but there’s a personal truth to the curious activities on stage from which the laughs spring, loud and often. He’s usually billed as an absurdist, which suggests he’s marginalised. And although he plays up to that, loving the way he divides a room, his appeal is wider than such pigeonholing would suggest.

Incongruously he has attracted a stag party this afternoon, sitting in the front row. Not a super-rowdy one – they at least had the patience to wait in the long queues Kearns can now attract in a room too small for his popularity – but still keen to be the centre of attention.

Yet they loved him – take note club owners: everyday punters can enjoy deviations from the norm – while he both indulged them slightly and kept them in check. After all, for all his self-doubt and peculiar persona, the on-stage Kearns is always in charge on stage. Anyone who barks ‘mango chutney’ into your face has to be. And when listing some of his personal likes he shows a brilliant defiance to the opinion of others with a ‘so sue me!’ line that’s sidesplittingly funny, and all down to the desperate yet commanding delivery.

Although set pieces are the foundations of the show; there’s just so much delight in the writing. There are brilliantly witty descriptions, such as the frog soap-holder in his nan’s house, which is topped with a superb payoff. He can evoke like a poet, with eloquent yet hilarious images crammed into a single sentence, with a line describing his actions at a fireworks display proving a perfect, beautiful tragicomic metaphor for his whole life.

There are a couple of short sections that don’t quite shine with the brilliance of the majority, such as a Frankenstein bit alluding to the monster he’s created. But the only real complaint is that, running at just about 40 minutes today, this wonderful show is over far too quickly.

Jim Davidson: No Further Action

Jim Davidson arrives in Edinburgh with more baggage than a Samsonite store. The old-school dinosaur – racist, sexist and homophobic by reputation – has made an incursion behind enemy lines and into a vipers’ nest of artsy liberal intelligentsia who so despise him. Is this a further step, albeit a bold one, in his bid for mainstream public acceptance, post-Big Brother?

That won’t be easy to achieve. Though he would be loathe to admit it, his material has been all those -ist words at various points over his career. Nor is his public image exactly loveable. There’s the domestic violence for starters. Yet we at least tolerate Spike Milligan for similar profession transgressions, and Richard Pryor for similar personal ones. But those forebears gave us The Goons and Live In Concert, and Davidson gave us Boobs In The Wood. Good art forgives bad behaviour.

If you’re not a fan, it’s impossible to put all this out of your mind, heading to Davidson’s show; and he fuels it, to an extent, reminding the audience that the critics who police comedy would berate them for laughing at reactionary material, and stoking up the idea of ‘politically correct nonsense’ that serves to stifle him. His shtick would make him the Nigel Farage of comedy, railing against the imagined forces of oppression, which the genuinely oppressed would probably call progress.

But in fact – and here’s perhaps the headline of the show – Davidson professes himself to be no fan of UKIP, and even hails immigration for providing a vital workforce, doing jobs white British folk won’t.

So what if this wasn’t Jim Davidson making his Fringe debut with his reputation proceeding him, but a jobbing 60-year-old London comedian called Ken Davis – a stage name Davidson once considered when he started, being a corruption of his real first name Cameron, or Cam?

You’d certainly say he was a consummate professional. The man knows how to tell a gag, and keeps them coming thick and fast in an opening section largely about his hard-drinking Scottish dad. It’s not going to demolish an stereotypes, but the timing’s impeccable and he’s a dab hand at accents, from weegie rapscallions to Alex Ferguson. And yes, some from outside British shores, too.

You would praise Davis’s storytelling skills, too, holding the audience rapt with longer, personal, joke-scarce routines by the strength of his delivery alone.

And you’d say he could be a bit crude, but with a rough diamond charm. Very occasionally he shows a generational gap, too, by doing things that aren’t really acceptable nowadays. But nothing really jars unless you’re purposefully looking out to be offended, save for a line when re-enacting a visit to a particularly vile public toilet. When he screws up his face in disgust, he puts on a comedy East Asian accent and says he looks ‘like that Korean dictator’.

If we drop the Davis conceit, Davidson has been around enough to know this gag will get into the reviews, and complains that he can’t escape being vilified for this sort of thing. But does it anyway in defiance, as if stubbornness might change the outcome. He seems not quite sure what path to take, go with the prevailing sensibilities, or stick to his guns and portray himself as a maverick against the liberal elite.

But mostly, his material is perfectly in keeping with plenty of other shows at the Fringe, with personal anecdotes mixed with sly digs and observational stuff about the likes of Lidl and Jeremy Kyle – not the most imaginative topics, perhaps, as plenty of comics cover this ground. But they don’t generally get picked up for ‘punching down’ in the same way as Davidson does; perhaps they should.

He’s also got some fantastic showbusiness anecdotes about Freddie Starr’s mischievous pranks. Starr was, of course, like Davidson caught in the Operation Yewtree net, which now looks like it was rather indiscriminately thrown.

His atypically longwinded account of his arrest and interrogation (with far too much blether about the reporters hanging around his house ahead of the fact) is a fascinating and eye-opening insider’s view of what he understandably considers a witch-hunt. Police, of course, should investigate any allegation, and my opinion at first was that hearing Davidson presenting his one-sided story would be akin to hearing a dangerous driver telling the cop who pulled him over to investigate ‘real crimes’, oblivious to the bigger picture.

But his questioning had a comically Kafkaesque tone (and no, I can’t believe I’ve just used ‘Kafkaesque’ in connection with a Jim Davidson gig, either); and with the amount of time and money squandered before it was decided no further action was to be taken against him, you do wonder why the process couldn’t have got to the truth quicker. Davidson says the affair cost him £120,000 in legal fees and £500,000 in work.

He has a saviour in the guise of his old mate Richard Desmond, the media baron who owns Channel 5, the Daily Star, OK!, some porn channels and the Daily Express, which entirely coincidentally just gave Davidson’s book about his ‘year from hell’ a five-star review.

Before Yewtree, Desmond had already promised to revitalise Davidson’s career with a chat show or revival of a game show like Big Break; starting with a stint in Celebrity Big Brother. ‘We’ll fill the house with crumpet and find a gay bloke for you to piss off,’ the tycoon told him. Those plans were put on hiatus for a year after Davidson’s arrest, but the comic’s subsequent success on the show is certainly paving the way for a comeback.

After all, he was once the face of mainstream TV entertainment. The Fringe show reminds you why; for although the tone may be laddish (and very occasionally unacceptable), he works a room expertly. I even think he’s probably not racist now, which shows just how persuasive he is, even if in the past his material might have given real racists some reinforcement.

Davidson’s probably going to play largely to existing fans this run, but I came out at least partly converted. There are reservations and caveats – the closing routine is certainly more graphically filthy than it needs be –  but this is a much funnier and more engrossing hour than you’d probably expect.

Sara Pascoe vs History

Evolutionary theories of sexuality aren’t, oddly enough, the most obviously sexy topic for a comedy show, with talk of competitive sperm, selfish genes and Victorian societal values influencing scientific opinion seeming something of a buzzkill.

But Sara Pascoe covers all this and more in a super-ambitious, meticulously researched show that also hits the feminism zeitgeist as well as including confidently frank anecdotes about her own sexual experience – and her mother’s unusual methods of snagging a man.

The result is something of a lecture as she expounds wide-ranging theories on sexual frustration, infidelity, nuclear families and the everyday sexism of FHM and Robin Thicke, all viewed through the prism of her experiences. So the stand-up staple of talking about her relationship becomes the basis of case study as she delves into the reading material to find out why things are as they are.

When it comes to the moral questions, she found that things are never quite as black and white as she would hope – or the hastily-formed Twitter consensus of her liberal friends would suggest. Yes, she supports the No More Page 3 campaign, but what of those women’s rights to express themselves and earn the Murdoch shilling? So an imaginative alternative solution must be found, and she has one.

Less easy to solve in a comic way is the dichotomy between those who would ban the burka as an symbol of male oppression, and those who say the state has no right in saying how a woman can dress… that question is left to hang in the air. Comedy likes certainty, so getting a hard-hitting punchline out of some of this is difficult.

Now she’s well-informed, her directness about discussing her sexual wants on stage causes some discomfort to her boyfriend –  also a comedian on the Fringe, gossip fans –  but not to the audience, who appreciate the honesty, nor to herself, who doesn’t want to see natural urges considered clandestine.

You might take from this that there is a slight academic tone, and there is – not helped by the venue being a thinly disguised lecture theatre. However, it is a fascinating discourse, tempered by her knack of adding quirky comedy tags to the facts. Plus she has a disarming, self-aware way of undermining any superiority by portraying herself as something of an impostor in this world of knowledge, wearing it lightly. She also proves she’s a relaxed, in-control comic, making good sport with the latecomers without demeaning them - which would rather go against her overall spirit of positivity.

Pulling all this together is an mighty achievement, and it’s hard not to be impressed by that. The ‘but…’ is that while the hour is consistently amusing, hearty laughs are scarce, as there’s a comic punchiness missing from some of the longer sections where informing takes priority over entertaining, but only narrowly.

If the Royal Institution are looking to ‘gag up’ their annual scientific Christmas lectures, they might want to get Pascoe on the phone.

Alex Edelman: Millennial

‘I have a mouth on me,’ Alex Edelman tells us, rather unnecessarily as he regales yet another tale of smart-arsery and backchat.

This young Bostonian Jew cannot see a relationship break-up in a coffee shop without wading in; cannot call the BlackBerry helpline without escalating the situations; or cannot pop into a London cupcake store without it becoming an ‘incident’. Even the first man on the moon is not immune to his cheek.

This rich source of stories provides the meat of Edelmen’s accomplished Fringe debut – a slick, pacy, gag-packed hour that has the confidence to eschew obvious themes, elaborate constructions or performance gimmicks, instead comprising only proudly unadulterated stand-up, pure and simple.

Material is scaffolded by a recurring story in which he quite literally tries to determine if he is the voice of a generation – a thorough academic questionnaire to see how representative he is of the millennial Generation Y of young twentysomethings. And, despite the show’s title, the answer is ‘not really’.

But that’s probably a benefit for a stand-up rightly unconcerned with hitting a demographic. Instead he has an outsider’s eye and a maturity towards his craft that belies his still relatively tender years. Howeveer he understands the millennial’s place in the world as having a voice, but it not yet mattering – a sentiment that certainly drives his work.

Another big factor in his comedy is his Jewishness – he’s an observant, orthodox practitioner who’s never tasted bacon and greets his Saturday night crowd with a a cheery ‘good Shabbat’. Modern stand-up is, of course, substantially Jewish in outlook and rhythm, which Edelman innately follows. ‘What does being Jewish mean?’ he asked his Papa when he first became aware of his heritage. ‘It means you’re never happy with the status quo; you always want things to be different.’

That certainly explains some of Edelman’s run-ins with authority, somewhere between petulant and playful, stubborn and stupid. He’s certain a clever-dick – as you might hope from a $193,000 New York University education, from which he graduated just last year.

Edelman has also learned how to be a sharp comic operator, and every honed line in this calling-card of a show drivers towards the next gag with lean efficiency. Sometimes you can see the end joke coming, but the steps along the way are still enjoyable.

What’s missing is a strong emotional tow. Over the hour we are introduced to Edelman but barely get to know him beyond his wise guy comments. Nevertheless, this is certainly an assured debut for a young comic who absolutely knows what to do, and does it well.

Spencer Jones Is The Herbert

Spencer Jones’s clownish alter-ego – a sort of grubby Mr Bean – is clearly not for everyone, losing nearly three full rows to good-natured walkouts in this performance.

But although inconsistent, there are some appealing, inventive displays of physical comedy from his wide-eyed man-child character with the pudding-basin haircut. The idea is that builders renovating his house have left their tools around, and he can’t help but muck about with the hardware, coming up with imaginative new uses for lagging, brackets, two-by-four lumber and so forth. His energy is of an unhurried bloke tinkering around, killing time.

A student of Philippe Gaulier – aren’t they all? – Jones has donned a peculiar outfit of translucent leggings, hideously gaudy T-shirt and a jacket which still seems to have the hanger in to become The Herbert. He mutters away in semi-coherent noises, almost like a Teletubby, showing off his inventions to the audience with the excitement of a four-year-old displaying their finger painting.

This prop work teeters from the indulgent to the inspired, but there are some gloriously hilarious images conjured up here – unique, too, given his starting point. As well as the hardware, there are some discarded toys, and he has some special fun mucking about with a box of groan tubes and a battered cheap plastic doll, voiced with a swazzle - the doohickey Punch and Judy men use to create Punch’s high rasp. Sometimes it looks like this mucking about isn’t going to plan, but I suspect that would be to underestimate Jones, who’s clearly applied his full creative faculties to this distinctive hour.

The show takes a turn even deeper into the surreal with a routine in which The Herbert takes drugs, producing an image so uproariously disconcerting that a couple of the younger girls in the front couldn’t bring themselves to look him in the bulbous eye, and turned away in comic revulsion. But in fact this is physical character comedy well worth keeping an eye on

• Click here for all Chortle’s 2014 reviews

Published: 22 Aug 2020