Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

He may have just been nominated for best newcomer in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, but a straw poll of Jack Skipper’s audience reveals that most people are here because they know of his online presence, not his live work.

But if you were to back anyone to make the difficult leap from TikTok to stand-up star, the former carpet fitter would be a safe bet. While he’s still striving for fully distinctive material, his roguish likeability and easy-going, natural delivery are hugely appealing.

His rough diamond charm is heightened by his assertion that he’s more sensitive than most of the more laddish alpha males he used to work alongside in Croydon. The notion is that he can be a bridge between that culture and more bourgeois festival comedy crowds, enlightening them as to the dubious delights of cheap family caravan park holidays, for example, that will be relatable to the rest of the audience who share his background.

Skipper certainly enjoys teasing Edinburgh’s Fringe crowd about their privilege, with running jokes about how he’ll never fully understand the middle-class, and probably vice-versa.

But don’t go looking for big themes as  the idea that comedy should be smart or message-laden is not for him. ‘You’re going to walk out thicker than you came in,’ he states, part of a constant self-deprecatory theme that he’s proud to be an idiot. And some of his old colleagues were even dumber, especially the one who made an hilariously unthinking comment to the director of the funeral parlour they were working on.

Nostalgia for the 1990s is a tried-and-tested strand,  re-living his nightclubbing youth and reflecting on how things have changed for him now he’s into his late-30s with children of his own. And, looking up a generation, we hear about his conservative father, unable to get his head around modern ways. Maybe in 25 years, the comedian’s offspring will say the same about him?

The holiday theme remerges with stories of heading abroad with the lads in middle age, and there’s a bit about random mums using him as a proxy policeman to curb their children’s misbehaviour – ‘the man will get you’ –  that’s redolent of an old Dara O’Briain bit, and which Skipper also previously made into a TikTok video that’s amassed more than 6million views.

This shtick is popular – just look at Micky Flanagan – and Skipper has a similar broad appeal, even if the material isn’t as polished or memorable. But he’s only two years out of winning the So You Think You’re Funny? competition for the newest of new acts and has produced an accomplished debut, an unflagging hour of mainstream stand-up, with occasional bursts of flair to suggest he’s capable of even more.

Review date: 26 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard