Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

A return to form for Chloe Petts after the more contrived, performative elements of last year's show, How You See Me, How You Don't feels rooted in a real emotional journey.

Like any comic who's not a cis, white, straight male, Petts has experienced more than her unfair share of online abuse.

Yet these attacks have tended to bounce off a comic who's not so much woke as a woke enforcer, her build and laddish swagger casting her in the mould of regulator rather than target.

Indeed, with the glossary of terms with which she kicks off the show, she proves herself fully au fait with the insults and counter-insults, self-identifications and slurs filling up the internet, subverting some of them with mischievous intent. This, she maintains, will be a show for out-of-touch boomers and toxically radicalised young men as much as for everyone else.

However, by having the temerity to land her own football show on the rigorously heteronormative Sky Sports, the Crystal Palace fan attracted an unprecedented amount of online abuse, to the point that it was impacting her health and love of the beautiful game.

Fortunately, as a stand-up, she has a right to reply. And with a bit of distance, she can be philosophical about the experience, not trading hate for hate but taking revenge a little more jujitsu,by living well. Her gender identification is expressed as the doubts she sows in her haters' minds.

Besides, it's a golden age for her to be a big butch lesbian as the failings of laddish blokes are sending petite bisexual girls into her orbit. Sex education and society's lack of gay female role models may have failed her growing up, keeping her firmly in a closet she was barely aware that she was in. But she's got a proud, expressive sense of herself now.

However, for all Petts' amusing braggadocio and assured, peacock strutting – exemplified by the way she takes a potentially disruptive audience member and turns them into a good-natured, running gag in the show I caught – props are given to the allies that have helped her. 

If there's a slightly sour note to the narrative, it's that while Petts'  Sky show was cancelled for budgetary reasons, to her trolls, it must have looked as if they had successfully hounded her off the airwaves, and their attendance at a Fringe festival for a rebuttal seems unlikely. 

It's no great matter, though, because Petts is thriving as a front-foot stand-up in their absence and seemingly all the stronger for the experience.

Review date: 18 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard