Edinburgh’s Fringe must tackle underlying problems to guarantee its future, writes ANDY MOSELEY After almost four weeks, the comeback Fringe is at an end. Sifting through the evidence, opinions and anecdotes to get to the truth of whether or not it was a success is an even more daunting task than removing the rubbish that […]
Review: Matt Forde, Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right
✭✭✭✭ Already one of the longest titles for a show at this year’s fringe, Matt Forde opens by saying he would have gone for a longer one had Gerry Rafferty written a song which included various expletives that more accurately sum up his opinions of politics in Britain today. He notes that he’s going to […]
Review: Dave Johns – A Comic’s Tale
✭✭✭✭ Most familiar for playing the title role in ‘I Daniel Blake’, Dave Johns is less well known for being a stand-up comedian, in spite of doing it for much of the last 40 years. He ably demonstrated why it shouldn’t have taken a Ken Loach film to bring him to stardom. Opening with a […]
Review: Hal Cruttenden – It’s Best You Hear It From Me
✭✭✭✭ One of several ‘work-in-progress’ shows that premiered at the Fringe-lite festival last year, It’s Best You Hear It From Me returns as the finished product this year. The main changes aren’t the result of audience feedback – last year’s show could easily have gone on the road with no alterations – but instead come […]
Review: Charlie Williams – Eh up, Me Old Flowers
✭✭ Billed as the Charlie Williams Story, this is the story of the first black comedian to become a household name in the UK. Sadly, caught between being a This is Your Life style biography and an attempt to view 1970s comedy through a 2020s lens, it fails to deliver. We see him visited by someone from […]