Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Danny Clives has been a comedian for a decade, but you probably wouldn’t guess it from this low-wattage Fringe debut.

He’s a handy joke writer, turning all the things that have gone wrong in his life – which are many – into wittily understated punchlines. But upscaling individual lines into a show proves a challenge too far, with his awkward delivery emphasising the flaws rather than spotlighting the gags. 

Just 15 minutes in, he asks ‘how long have I got?’, and not, apparently, as a joke, The whole show wraps up in a little over 35.

There’s a thin line between charmingly chaotic, low-key self-deprecation and a performer who doesn’t really seem to know what he’s doing, and Clives falls the wrong side of it. 

It doesn’t appear that he’s especially enjoying performing the show, with most of the material delivered to the floor – he’s not big on eye contact – and overly apologising for himself.

‘I know that joke needs work but it’s the best I’ve got right now,’ he says at one point. At another: ’Some of these stories don’t go anywhere but I don’t want to lie to you’, lest he be accused of embellishing an anecdote for comic effect.

Playing the awkward loser is an established comic viewpoint, and Clives – 34, single, and still living at home with his mum in Dudley with very little going on in his life – has plenty to exploit. But he has to own the underdog status in way that currently eludes him.

When he does commit to getting stuck in there’s some good stuff, such as a weird mugging and going to a haunted house escape room in Budapest as his relationship collapses

He repeatedly sets up his bits with a statement followed by ‘…which wasn’t ideal’ or ‘…which wasn’t good’, empty filler phrases which sound unconfident when repeated so often. And at the end of this extended set he checks his notebook to see if he missed anything. There was, about a minute’s worth, which he then delivers out of context.

It still gets a laugh as another amusing take on his low-status life from a guy who knows how to write a joke. But unfortunately he hasn’t yet figured out how to be a performer, too.

Review date: 15 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard