Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Alfie Packham’s giving strong Simon Amstell vibes. Not only has he a similar vocal cadence, but he also shares a nerdily analytical approach to life, especially when focussed on his own social awkwardness.

His opener about his ethnic ambiguity is one of the best examples of its kind, as he sets up the show as inspired by some personal stocktaking as he hit his 30th birthday.

He’s a geek but slightly embarrassed by it. For example, he’s a Warhammer fan, but self-aware enough not to buy into all the performative medieval nonsense that surrounds the fantasy tabletop game. And trying to become a ‘football man’ as a way to lose some weight was definitely out of character.

The extra pounds was kummerspreck, the ‘grief bacon’ caused by emotional overeating to deal with sorrow, in Packham’s case his mother’s terminal illness. My Gift To You has loss at its heart, though a more unusual brand, as his mother survived several years after her diagnoses – including lockdown, which Packham spent with her – leaving the family in a sort of grief stasis.

Packham’s debut also covers him being a people-pleaser, the crushing awkwardness of middle-aged men trying to express condolences and the strange pride the residents of his home village, Mamble in Worcestershire, have at featuring in a poem.

He’s witty and incisive in his cerebral commentary and can evoke fine images, such as Rubbernecker emerging to witness the aftermath of a bus accident. However the narrative doesn’t flow as naturally as he should, although a box of meaningful gifts helps smooth over the stop/start momentum to some extent.

It also feels as if he’s got caught up in the things comedians feel they ‘ought to do’ in a Fringe show, culminating a bucket list tuned into a sad poem, dramatically delivered, built on a sentimentality that had not really been present over the preceding hour. 

But he’s a thoughtful and distinctive writer, shedding those Amstell comparisons as the show revealed more of his own voice and rhythms. He still feels like a comedian in progress, but this debut shows clear intent for the sort of intelligently funny work he should be capable of.

Review date: 14 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett