Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Ignore the second word in the title of Veteran Comedian. Nick Wilty’s account of his days serving in the Army is a theatrical monologue that makes no claims to be funny and is often quite the opposite, which is entirely unsurprising given the subject matter.

The occasional incident shows that truth can sometimes be more surreal than fiction – such as the moment Wilty’s unit raised an unusual flag over Port Stanley Airport in the 1982 Falklands conflict – but this account does not shy away from the harsh realities of war. 

Wilty joined the military in his teens to satisfy a wanderlust that sustains to this day – he’s performed stand-up in 61 countries since his first gig while backpacking in Canada in 1990 and has visited 40 more.

His story here starts light, talking about some of the jobs he applied for to see the world, but didn’t get, which seems redundant given the main thrust of the narrative. Although the fact he gambled away the life-changing sum of money he received as compensation from a motorbike accident on the tables of Vegas while taking a hippy-bus tour of the States speaks to what character of man Wilty is, or was.

Things pick up plot-wise, and in his own unfocussed life, when he enlists with the Signals, chosen as they are the corps that travels the most and, theoretically, is never directly engaged in combat operations. His first posting was to Belize, where the jungle proved more dangerous to one of his poor comrades than the enemy.

From there, he joined the Mobile Airborne Operation Team and became involved in one of the British military’s most high-profile missions on home turf, before joining the Task Force to reclaim the Falklands after the Argentine invasion.

To give an incident-by-incident account of what Wilty experienced and witnessed would be a spoiler for his show and could never do justice to a first-hand account from a skilled storyteller. He conveys a real sense of impending danger as his ship – a commandeered cross-channel ferry – got ever closer to the Falklands. Once there, he brings the truth of his war to vivid, awful life.

Wilty mentions significant moments in the conflict, such as the sinking of Naval warships, but these are often distant incidents. This is a personal account through his eyes alone, and what comes across more is how fragile life is in the theatre of war, with death and appalling injury just a slip away.

As well as learning of the loss of friends on other vessels, he describes a few moments of breathtaking horror he witnessed first-hand. The one that involves him most directly is just awful, though any word to describe it seems inadequate. The room is so silenced when he recalls it, you could hear a heartbeat.

The comic’s wartime memories – which came flooding back when he came across, entirely by chance, the Chinook helicopter he flew in at an aircraft museum – paint a compelling picture of what it’s like to be an ordinary soldier in extraordinary circumstances. Shorn of the romanticised derring-do of many wartime memoirs, this is a powerful, personal story, related with genuine emotion by a skilled storyteller.

Review date: 16 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House