Bobby Carroll's Diary - Simon David / Emily Wilson / Lucy Porter

Written by: Bobby Carroll
Published: Sunday 14th August 2022

If I can sneak a plastic pint out of one of the Big Four's corporate beer gardens (naughty) then my favourite spot to decompress and people watch on the Fringe is "the gauntlet": a run of promo teams, street performers, hustlers and food trucks that starts at the university sexual health clinic and flows down to the Meadows. A crush of everyone at the festival, sluiced down one accidental month-long gutter.

I've seen a flyering team dressed as 90s ravers, so in character with their knackered dancing, that they completely forgot to flyer anyone who passed them for twenty minutes. I've seen someone try to eat Pie and Mash while walking... with no free hands... certainly no cutlery... Yet little catches the eye like musical comedian Simon David cutting about on baby pink rollerskates, wearing a matching velvet short skirt romper suit.

On stage he's a striking figure. Fabulous but trashy, feather boa sprouting like ivy from his more formal black blazer. The crowd seem game, nobody is droned out by the necessary but ever present throb of his unit of an air conditioning unit. The mic remains toppy throughout. Technical quibbles that might kill a flat audience, and here nobody is phased.

This is a show, scrappy but vibrant. He plays the room well, engaging just about everyone directly over the hour, rather than hectoring just one or two unfortunates in the front row. If you are in, seated, he'll probably talk to you, but the spotlight remains firmly on him.

His stand-up and his songs have some wonderful rug pulls early doors. Expect the unexpected. He is a talented musician who never resorts to parody.

Why Am I Wanking To This? is a torch song power ballad that no doubt anyone who has ever watched porn will identify with, whatever their orientation. Tesco Express blends Miami Sound Machine with Scissor Sisters; the room loses all sense of decorum when he demands call and response to his lyrics. The gold star must go to Puwease, a song that repurposes an 80s sitcom style jingle and comments on the blurring of consent within the gay community.

It is followed by an elongated moment of transgressive physicality that might split some rooms. David had built up plenty of trust and goodwill the night I saw him. Cleverly he stuck to his guns, riding the waves of discomfort and elation until the room was unified by his brave, silly coup-de-grace.

He even had a lovely piece of pure man and mic stand-up, recounting what legendary London nightclub Heaven was like when restrictions were only slightly eased between lockdowns. He proves himself in this hour to be a performer with a surprising amount of strings to his bow. A natural comedy all-rounder.

The overall message of his piece, White Gay, is that some of the LGBTQI+ community can be just as toxic or vapid as the established insiders of society. David is smart enough to not ram his point home but equally it doesn't come too far from left of field. The whole show builds to his ultimate intention without getting in the way of the fun. It is a skill many a more seasoned comedian hasn't mastered, so more power to him.

Two musical comedians in one night - I'm officially out of my comfort zone. Emily Wilson is a hoofer, a showstopper, was an X Factor contestant at the mere age of 15. Stardust warms her veins. She's been performing on dad's camcorder, then YouTube, and then the biggest televised talent show of the last decade before she could legally drive.

One thing this show brought home to me, a Generation X-er, is that unlike Millennials who I share a lot of common ground with, I have never lived a childhood where every cringe-worthy experiment I tried was documented, published and retained digitally ready to be an audio visual backdrop for a future debut comedy hour.

Maybe Wilson's show leans a little too heavily on well edited, projected clips but not many of us have so much fertile footage of ourselves riding the fame bronco that was Simon Cowell's The X Factor. I had a fear at first that I was going to be left out of this story. It is very much a monologue from a former young Republican who craved fame singing other people's songs at a very early age. I had consciously tapped out of watching rigged Saturday night talent shows a good 10 years before her month in the sun.

And though she always addresses the stalls directly in a declarative style, this is such a firmly scripted piece you suspect that when she rhetorically aims an open line at each section of the Pleasance Beneath's seating, it is with a clockwork uniformity. She has diligently blocked out and planned for "engagement", leaving little organic interaction to chance. It is a slick multi-media show with minimal wriggle room for spontaneity. Every beat is ruthlessly set in stone.

The saving grace is that Wilson is such a laser targeted performer you cannot help but be overwhelmed by her chutzpah. I have never before witnessed musical comedy and a storytelling show combine their divergent forms so well. Her dance sequences spectacularly whack home the paranoia and disappointment her 15 year-old self had to live through live on air. The callbacks and smart video edits start to land with increasing regularity.

Fixed is a calculated onslaught of razzamatazz that won even me over by the end. At a point when most shows are winding up and winding down, I wanted more from Wilson. If she can get such a rich hour from her juvenile years, I cannot wait to see what might happen next in her college set sequel. And, hey, whatever happened to Austin, her untrustworthy partner in her early bid for fame?

There's an apocryphal story about a screening of A Fish Called Wanda where a German man laughed so hard at John Cleese stripping that he died of a heart attack in the cinema. I think all of us, even those of us who are the biggest fans of the Eighties post-Python comedy, might concede that other contributing health factors played a part before the doomed man first chuckled.

Now, with that in mind, there weren't many people in Lucy Porter's queue at the Pleasance Courtyard who didn't need some kind of walking aid. And her room is at the tippity-top of a four-flight industrial staircase. In the most literal sense, it is lucky she didn't kill. Thank goodness none of these Boomers saw a food stall nearby charging £12 for a bang average looking cheese toastie. Otherwise, ambulances all round.

If you require a good rest before the walk-on music (Dexy's, The Four Tops) do try to contain yourself. The centre of the stage is an unmade bed, then she bounces onto stage in her tropical patterned PJs. This is a comfy show, unashamedly middle aged, for the recognisably middle aged and even the still middle aged at heart. I'm a decrepit 42 years-old and even some of the silvery references went wafting over my balding head. I chimed personally with friends with careers that baffle you, how 40-something male socialising works (bang on) and a neato Indiana Jones reference.

There's a well honed art to this kind of show. You have to delicately traverse an audience who have never seen the inside of a Glee or a Stand. The men come with their own jokes prepared as they find their seats, the ladies are a bit more open minded and no doubt selected this as their Friday couple's early evening out.

Porter executes her brief with elan. Her delivery is unmannered, open and inviting. Her energy bubbly but never at a pace that alienates. Gentle waves of knowing laughter occur with minimal stirring of the pot.

Wake-Up Call is a deceptively simple show, unfussy. In my mind Porter is the originator of the Fringe hour trope of ending the show on a banger. If the audience leaves on a high, then why not reaffirm that with pop floor filler as they shuffle out? As she bounces off stage, in her fluffy slippers and silky two piece, to a perfectly tee'd up hit, you can't help but feel mid-life crisis averted, and, for her, mission very much accomplished.

Now, after a week lounging about in the relative mainstream, my heart hankers for the risky and the different. The weekend looms, with genuinely alternative gambles and guaranteed transgressiveness dotted all over my dance card. Stay tuned... Don't get caught sneaking those drinks out...

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