Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Blurring the boundaries between a gig and a gathering, it almost goes without saying that Patrick Monahan's final show of the Fringe is a sentimental, overrunning affair.

A bit of market research at the top establishes that the Boro comic has attracted phenomenal levels of repeat custom, stretching back festivals. But then he can't be contained by an hour. You can witness him beforehand greeting old friends before the show starts, pressing the flesh afterwards, inviting some of his acquaintances onstage to sing a Cliff Richard medley as his finale.

Establishing various punters as his touchstones to bounce off, with various levels of contrivance, they become characters, reference points or affirmations for his tales, offering up different perspectives from various generations and nationalities.

Several of the sweeping generalisations he makes comparing the experiences of the youth of today and his own adolescence growing up in the 1980s and 1990s are contradictory, lack any overarching argument and perpetually fail to really chime with the audience member he picks to endorse them. But it doesn't matter. The still-puppyish veteran just twists the responses to fit his setup at any moment, or seeks out another audience member who will.

There's a telling moment when he entertainingly acts out his physically demanding escape from the clutches of an old-school paedophile, extracting himself from the bit with a cheeky nod to the recent scandals of celebrity broadcasters allegedly grooming younger co-workers.

But an Estonian in the front row, whose relationship with his American friend has doggedly resisted Monahan's efforts to cast them as his go-to example of a young couple, wants to know – what happened with the paedophile? Having established such strong bonds around the room, some are perhaps more invested in his superficial, throwaway material than is helpful.

To be fair, he briefly ventures into the murky details of the Huw Edwards case. And his recollection of his first lads' holiday, when an unscrupulous caravan park owner took advantage of him and his mates' naivety, is amusingly reimagined in a modern context, with the antagonist bamboozled by the complexity of contemporary gender identity.

Generally though, as Monahan casts about trying to compare and contrast the holidaying expectations of various punters, seeking to establish a generation gap of horizons and once again, finding that reality doesn't quite fit his pre-ordained narrative, there's little of depth beyond a (slightly Boomerish) general assessment that despite everything, young people have never had it so good.

He's not oblivious to the cost-of-living crisis. And his heart and sense of mischief are in the right place with the majority of us who've had to tighten our belts. He's an incorrigible everyman after all. But it's a position of ‘grin and bear it’ that some might find frustrating.

What's more, for someone who's always been such a vital, irrepressible force of nature, he's in danger of drifting into prematurely fusty self-parody, nostalgically recalling childhood days of privation where he and his siblings were strung eight-wide, seatbelts free, across the back of the car.

Despite these faults though, Monahan's restless urge to entertain remains pretty loveable, the painful details of a jogging session gone wrong related with wince-inducing detail of the injury to his person, his housemate's lack of sympathy met with naughtily disproportionate revenge.

 At 47, he's still got that scampish enthusiasm that you intuit will see him continuing to come here for the next 20 Fringes.

Review date: 28 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House