Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Bobby Davro’s having a lovely war. Culture war, that is. 

The notion that the one-time doyen of primetime entertainment is telling the sort of jokes you can’t tell any more gives him an air of transgression he loves to exploit. The tongue-in-cheek trigger warning here tells us he’s a white heterosexual male telling politically incorrect jokes that snowflakes might find offensive. You can’t even be white in this country any more…

But any suggestion he’s a dangerous edgelord is undermined by the fact he comes out singing jauntily to I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), the da-da-da-das proving the perfect rhythm to chant his name.

For Davro’s a crowd-pleasing entertainer and is damn good at it: cheeky smile, instant rapport, rat-a-tat delivery. I hesitate to say it, but if more modern comedians had a fraction of his showmanship, the circuit would be a jollier place. Never mind that every reference point was ancient: Norman Wisdom, Tom Jones, Susan Boyle – a relatively contemporary one, her, having risen to fame just 15 years ago.

Call it a guilty pleasure, but ten minutes or so of this is rather fun, even if I had heard 95 per cent of the jokes before. The other 5 per cent I attribute to me missing them doing the rounds, rather than thinking Davro wrote them, but the ‘new’ ones almost all made me laugh thanks to his spot-on delivery.

However, the novelty of hearing jokes from the past wears off. That’s the biggest problem with unapologetic old-school acts like Davro: it’s not just that their values are stuck in the 1970s, their artistry is too. When you’ve heard every joke before, it gets boring. Stephen Hawking impressions were hack 20 years ago, but here he is trotting it out again. That said, most of the room were enthusiastically lapping it up. It’s comfort comedy, the jokes they know, like watching a covers’ band. And Davro is a very good covers’ comic.

Some of his gags are non-PC, as advertised. But they tend to be cringe more than offensive. ‘I’m not racist, I’ve got a colour TV’ comes from a time when ‘coloured’ was acceptable language and you still had black and white tellies. 1960s, maybe?

A couple of ‘ladyboys’ jokes obviously have an edge of transphobia but are played up to be silly, told by an idiot – which feels a lot less toxic than Dave Chappelle adopting a philosopher stance to spread his views as if they were considered wisdom, rather than the bigotry relayed with fancy words that they are.

Sexism is Davao’s biggest -ism, mind, with bountiful gags about fat women, traditional gender roles and having his wife’s mouth bound up with gaffer tape… but they’re not that far from what Jimmy Carr might crack with more obvious irony. How that reflects on both Carr and Davro, you can decide.

Davro’s style is not to talk much about himself. He had a stroke in January at the age of 65, just days after his father died and less than a year after his fiancée also passed away. But he mentions this news only in passing to emphasise just how happy he is to be back on a stage, doing what he loves.

He also complains that he can’t get on TV and then runs through the sizeable list of reality shows he’s featured on. EastEnders, too. It’s more factual than jokey, but he doesn’t miss the chance to call his female co-star on the soap ugly.

The stand-up is interspersed with songs - some with comedy lyric swaps, some sincere, but all keep the mood lively. However it was a misstep to invite three women on stage to provide backing vocals to an Elvis number –  especially the sloshed girl who had her own ideas of what she wanted to do, that Davro struggled to control. That was the only time his bulletproof professionalism let him down.

There is an appeal here. Davro’s brand of everyone-shares-the-same-gags comedy has been out of style so long that maybe younger generations haven’t heard the jokes before – and they are certainly tried and tested – while older ones enjoy the throwback.

And he’s such a pro and – as he points out – untainted by some of the controversies that have hit other entertainers of his vintage, that he’s hard to dislike, whatever you say about some of his more dubious jokes.

Review date: 20 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Frankenstein Pub