Review by Steve Bennett

Writing this review is like stamping on an adorable puppy’s face. If there was a competition for the loveliest man of the Fringe, Jonny Donahoe, leader of the the foot-stomping, feelgood festival party band Jonny & The Baptists, would come second. Because he’s just too damn nice to come first.

But his debut as a stand-up is woefully misjudged. So weakly written and lacking even the basics of jokes, it’s as if he’s been sent into the bloody war of the Fringe armed only with a peashooter. And no peas.

We get to know what a thoroughly decent man he is before we enter the venue. He greets his audience in the queue, gathering us round in a small huddle to make us all feel welcome, and learning all our names. He makes a big point of this, carefully repeating them and logging them in his brain. Yet in the show itself, he chats to just one person by name, and gets it wrong. Derren Brown need not lose any sleep.

But that’s by-the-by. The blurb for Class Whore says he’s going to tackle ‘the ultimate taboo: the British class system’. As if class hasn’t been the basis of pretty much every great British comedy ever.

The essence of this talk is that he was born in a Reading high-rise and brought up by a single working-class mum; but thanks to a scholarship to a top school, he acquired an RP accent and became middle class. Now his mum thinks he’s ashamed of her because of her background; but he isn’t – she’s his mum and he loves her.

Using such a reductive précis could over-simplify any show, but really he doesn’t put it in much more depth or deliver many more surprises than that.

The more fatal flaw, however, is that he’s pretty much forgotten to include any jokes – except, perhaps, a misogynist pub gag he apologetically explains is there ‘to save the narrative’ and not representative at all.

A large chunk of the show is concerned with a report commissioned by the BBC earlier this year which divided the population into seven social classes, rather than just the traditional three. Now the strata run from the tiny elite at the top to the so-called precariat of poor and socially deprived at the bottom.

Donahoe – who relentlessly paces the stage in what appears to be a nervous release – goes through each of the definitions, explaining what it means, in a nicely chatty way, but with little apparent thought that this is a comedy show and needs gags. If this was an advertising executive delivering a marketing presentation about demographic targeting, you might note that it was relatively interesting and nicely delivered – but that is a long way from the requirements of an adequate comedy show.

Bottom of the class for Jonny.

Review date: 16 Aug 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett