STEWART LEE – BIG ISSUE FRINGE DIARY #3

For many performers, the Fringe offers a chance to launch their career on the international stage. An example of the latter is the Australian comedian Greg Fleet, who alongside the musician Mick Moriarty, brings a show called Fleetwood Mick to The Gilded Balloon this month.

Amongst those in the know, The Fleetster, as he is never called, is regarded as one of the best comics in the world ever. That said, The Fleet-o has rarely done anything to justify his reputation to the public at large, having spent vast proportions of his adult life asleep in ditches, staring at plastic forks, or wandering off in the wrong direction towards a distant shining object only he was able to discern.

The Fleetorama could have come here to the Fringe with a greatest hits set of all the best routines of his twenty-five year career, underscored by Moriarty’s sensitive accompaniament, and reminded the world at large of why he is so highly regarded amongst his fellow comics. But he has chosen a different path. The opening five minutes of the new show was a mercurial display of The Fleetomat’s amazing stand-up skills, moving in seconds from high-octane whimsy to scathing political satire to deeply personal confessions in a way no other comic can. Then, a thousand flies are released from a jar, and for the following fifty minutes, Greg Fleet attempts to dance with them.

The flies, unaware of their role in the proceedings, buzz idly around the room, while the Fleetmeister, increasingly desperate, tries to coax them back to the stage with a brief bolero, some ballet moves, and a selection of interpretive dance poses. Needless to say, only someone interested in seeing a man with no dance training trying to dance with flies could truly enjoy this deviant event.

After the show we met in a private bar at the Gilded Balloon so exclusive that it is only rumoured to exist. Greg left agreeing to alter the stand-up/fly-dancing ratio in favour of the former. The fly dancing, he conceeded, is for next year, when everyone has finally recognised his genius.