Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

As the man with the most inappropriate surname in comedy, Paul Savage offers a friendly conversational saunter through some of the horrors of being a renter. With eight house moves in four years, it almost looks like he’s doing it for material – when it’s really an indictment of how the loaded system of ‘no-fault’ evictions robs tenants of the basic right to security.

Not that this a political rant about the state of the market. Even awful landlords are only a small part of his anecdotes, which focus more on the everyday issues of house-shares wrecking friendships and paper-thin walls, meaning you can always hear exactly what your housemates are up to.

Fed up with this life, he bought a boat to live on at a fraction of the price of a flat, and with a fraction of the comforts, as he amusingly describes. 

Selling it became an issue, though, and Savage gets tangled up in the story of deposits and lawyers and estate agents without a worthwhile payoff. All the frustrating toing-and-froing must have been a big part of his life for a while, but even if the financial stakes are high, it does not necessarily translate into a good story.

Nor does Savage restrict himself to property-based stories for the hour. In a gear-crunching segue he goes from Grand Designs (a fairly straightforward take on the C4 housebuilding show) to ‘isn’t it irritating being when TV programmes are interrupted by adverts. I saw this advert for Big: The Musical…’ and so into an interlude about that.

He’s got a great story about the time he worked in hotel maintenance, barely mentions his ADHD diagnosis, and has a decent but overly woolly bit on Jack Daniels commercials that could do with an edit.

Whatever the material, Savage is a personable host, naturally amusing and with the underplayed confidence 17 years on the circuit instils, making for a dependably funny hour. And if you chuck something into the bucket post-show, and he’ll give you a substantial, professionally produced book of witty, punny comic strips, which seems an excellent deal.

Review date: 11 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Just The Tonic at The Caves