Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

The foppish John Tothill is one of the most distinctive stand-up voices of his generation: louche, decadent and lazy, the requirements of everyday existence, like working for a living (ugh!) beneath his privileged status. It is surely due to some cosmic administrative cock-up that he was not born into the idle rich.

He exudes a superior camp erudition – though without doing the reading, obvs – with the big regret of his life that he will never able to hear his own words of wisdom.

Of course, there’s a significant disconnect between what he projects and reality. He’s not joining Lord Byron on a grand tour of Europe, he’s getting pissed down the pub with a colleague, he’s not living in Saltburn, he’s fighting off a biblical plague of mice in his flat.

Themes in this sophomore hour – equal part Oscar Wildean monologue and stand-up – include the tyranny of timekeeping, a bourgeois conceit that should not bind the likes of him. Unfortunately, the powers-that-be at the primary school where he taught didn’t see it that way, and he doesn’t work there any more.

Straight away, he promises to share with us the story of the rat who orgasmed to death and, after going round more houses than the Swindon bypass, finally gets to this cautionary tale about the dangers of seeking pleasure to excess. It’s advice you feel a languidly hedonistic soul like Tothill will never himself heed.

To escape having to work for money, he even signed up for a medical trial to develop anti-malarial tablets. However, it did not go well, with the troubling anecdote forming the cornerstone of his hour.

It is time idled in delightful company, even if Tothill can be nebulous in sticking to one theme or story – and this was one of the few shows he did between his appendix bursting and him going into hospital to have it dealt with, so was probably even more light-headed than usual. 

Tothill excels at bringing the crowd into his appealing, if impractical, worldview. He calls everyone ‘darling’, affecting to adore us as much as he wishes to be adored himself – all part of the fillip that an hour in his exquisite presence offers.

Review date: 13 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett