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If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One...McCHATTER Politics on the Festival agenda… you must be kidding

Herald Scotland Posted on Sunday, August 16th, 2009

THERE are more than 2000 shows on at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 265 venues. You can try to go to them, or you can just go to the excellent Stand Comedy Club where all your Fringe needs can be satisfied under one roof. The Stand is cheaper than the other venues, celebrates Scottish talent and isn’t run by the commercial comedy machines.

OK, advert over, because not everything at the Stand this year has been as good as it could be – much like the Edinburgh Festival, in fact. Following the greatest financial crisis in 80 years, I expected great things. Some things were indeed great – such as the inspired revival of the Gregory Burke play, Gagarin Way, a farcical tale of incompetent boss-napping which is much more topical today than when it was first perfumed at the Traverse in 2001. Phil Nichol’s anarcho-psychotic Eddie is seriously scary.

However, much of the comedy that I saw seemed to miss the political mark – though it hit other marks pretty accurately. David Longley is a very clever comedian who manages to combine Taoist philosophy and coprophilia in one very funny and literate hour. His commentary on the crisis of capitalism is that we’re all just basically greedy. But his poo jokes were good.

Steve Carlin is a Scottish comedian who’s as dry as the dust on the floor of a pub with no beer. His set explores the petty disappointments and humiliations of Scottish working-class life. Scottish financial planning? Keeping your toys in a box in case they’re worth something some day. Curiously though, his funniest routine was about the way they needlessly close and open the curtains at cinemas. Stewart Lee says Carlin is one of his top 10 comics, which is praise indeed from the comedian’s comedian, author of Jerry Springer – The Opera. But what happens when the comedian’s comedian isn’t very funny? I’m afraid the great Lee was having an off night when I saw him. Fine to make jokes about Jeremy Clarkson but only if you’re funnier than he is. Lee’s humour is all about repetition and digression, but a riff about a pear cider advert overstayed its welcome and went nowhere. Even brilliant comedians need material.

That’s a lesson Lee could re-learn from Mark Thomas’s absolutely brilliant Manifesto, in which he gets the audience to submit policy ideas for a better world. A maximum wage? Free public transport? How about making perpetrators of homophobic hate crime serve their sentences in drag? Most popular on the night: allowing people to vote against parties in elections as well as for them. It’s much funnier than it sounds. The show is laced with visual accounts of inspired stunts like kidnapping Margaret Moran MP’s expenses-funded potted bay tree. On Wednesday, Thomas will put the Edinburgh manifesto to real live MSPs in a free lunchtime show.

Yes, some real comedians.

Herald Scotland on 16th August 2009. Filed Under: If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One, Reviews
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