2011 Edinburgh Fringe
Bob Downe review
This is exactly what it'll be like when Jesus comes back. Well, let's hope so anyway.
Compellingly camp Aussie crooner Bob Downe has been away from the Fringe for four years, but absence clearly makes the heart grow fonder, and Bob go blonder. The Gilded Balloon's big debating chamber is awash with Downe acolytes, many of whom don't seem vastly different from the sort of psychotically menopausal mums who throw their freshly-laundered, neatly folded underwear at Barry Manilow.
Downe clearly straddles two stools here, pastiching smarmy, helmet-haired nightclub singers while also belting out his Golden Greats with enough genuine showbiz pizzaz to get practically the whole place singing along and waving their arms ("Try to all wave the same way," he tells a small and wayward group near the front. "You'll give me a migraine.")
In between songs he's down among his flock, flirting with a couple of strapping lads and getting a lady at the front to help with a costume change. Bob has been at the lounge-singing game for a while but his repartee is as pin-sharp as his trouser creases and - unlike some of the more topical comedians at this fest - he manages to work in a fair bit of stuff about the English riots and an impressive array of local references, from Edinburgh's tram debacle to the delights of Dundee.
Most of his banter is competition-based, however, and involves Downe giving away DVD copies of the British TV special he made back in the mid-1990s. This is mostly an ongoing plug for said item, which we're left in no doubt will be on sale in the cafe afterwards, and is the one slight negative aspect of an otherwise euphoric hour.
Still, the first winner deserves it. "Who sang that?" enquires Downe, after belting out an old classic. "You did," shouts a bloke at the back. He's not wrong.
Bob Downe: 20 Golden Greats listing
