Frank Skinner / Mary O'Connell / Sigmund The Viking / Avital Ash - Bobby Carroll's Fringe Diary

Written by: Bobby Carroll
Published: Sunday 13th August 2023

What is the most obnoxious thing you, an audience member, can do to purposely disrupt a comedy show? Heckle? Leave your ringtone on and answer any calls that come in? Try to have a brain farty conversation with the act that only you could follow (if you were sober)? Unbox a Camembert de Normandie tandoori and slurp it down during the 45 minute mark serious bit? Die? Review it?

Or maybe sit your four kids in the front of a night time comedy show? Even though they have minimal interest in stand-up? Sit a few rows back from them like chuckling cowards? And wait to see how the famous name deals with the black hole of innocence and ignorance you've plonked at the dead centre of their eyeline? A famous name of whom the 8 year-old almost certainly hasn't heard. Frank Skinner? Sounds like a Beast Quest character.

A cunt's move and, at over £19 quid a seat, a selfish kick of entitlement that should have gotten them turfed out of the Assembly on a rail. Skinner's month long run has entirely sold out; they were finding their spawns' place to unwittingly disrupt while entire sections further back were still empty. You couldn't call it a last minute seating compromise or a babysitter snafu. Skinner handled the weird little vacuum of enthusiasm and experience with surprising good grace. After all, that well-to-do eight year-old might be commissioning comedy editor for a streaming service in only a few years' time.

Skinner is not exactly unknown for his talent at crowdwork. He plays over, and to, the kids; bless him, even his references to what they might be into are a decade after their sell by date. Most pre-teens I know are into Prime flavoured vapes and FIFA. If he only knew about that one shred of common ground. When he says, "Right, I'm going to treat you like my own kids for the rest of the show and just ignore you," the 500 or so other adults in the room breathe a little collective sigh of relief. And going by the number of write-ups published this weekend that mention the aberrant young interlopers, half of that number were seemingly reviewers. I was out on date night with my wife, albeit a tax deductible date night. Who says romance is dead, hey?

We are paying to see the master at work, not the master take on a sideline as the world's most sharp suited babysitter. At the centre of the show Skinner settles down into 25 minutes of pure material. And it is glorious. Anecdotes about his meeting with the Royal family, standard sauciness at his childhood cornershop, composing a sea shanty and witnessing a substitute priest who is few decades behind the times but, bless his heart, ineffectively trying to keep up. That last story felt softly pointed. Comedy may have gone through a cosmic shift recently in terms of offence and language yet it transpires Skinner's brand of humour needs very little adjustment to pass in the new sensibilities. And it ain't all cheeky filth. Natalie was particularly taken by a story about Tim Rice's head. Crying with laughter by the end of it. This is the comedy worth living for.

Skinner plays at a rhythm and a mode that is quite different to anything out there on the Fringe currently. There is something laidback, sure footed about his gait that feels almost alien compared to even the veteran 50-somethings who do the Fringe year in, year out. He twice compares his comedy to a hammer. He remembers his first Edinburgh in 1991 when the lairy atmosphere meant the jokes had to swing hard like a giant test your strength machine mallet at a carnival to get a response. Later, he likens what he does to a village blacksmith - keeping up the unfashionable craft one sturdy tap at a time. For my money, he is actually more of a whittler. His routines gently, steadily, knowingly chip away at a concept until all you are left with is an undeniably virtuoso punchline. One of such solid, if naughty, condition you marvel at the art of the thing as it is revealed momentarily in his hands. And then after presenting that singular definitive thing to the world, it is tossed into the pile and he moves on to a new block and starts chipping away again. His wording, lilt, patience and infallibility are quite beautiful to behold.

There is a lengthy closer where he stretches himself. Telling a near epic poem about the embarrassingly sexualised, predatory women he used to work with at a West Midlands factory as a shy teenager. He abandons his usual approach and the monologue takes on almost a lyrical quality. The writing form is quite ambitious. But given how unsettled the gig was to begin, and the fact we were a while getting to hitting a steady stream of actual golden stand-up because of it, I think the Friday night fame hunters in the room felt a bit disengaged from the gear shift.

When Skinner finally walks off to rapturous applause, Natalie and I can still see him in the wings. He slumps and seems dissatisfied. Angry no doubt that he had to kick off to a potential clusterfuck; one he was more than capable of defusing, but shouldn't have to. Skinner probably does have plenty of road left in him if he has the appetite for it. Yet nights like this will staple the stomach. Which is a shame as it is nice to see a genuine legend risk the festival when they don't have to. He is still a potent entertainment force, not a retired quiz show host or reality TV show comeback. Edinburgh is lucky to have him up for the month.

Hotly tipped debutante Mary O'Connell strides into her bunker in a neon pink power suit jacket, diamond Rolex watch earrings and two guns that blast wodges of fake money at the audience. It is a daft and absurd entrance to a show at its best when it is daft and absurd.

Money Princess is a bit of a sloppy collage. There are the theatrics that play to O'Connell's true talents, the spoken memoir of an OnlyFans comedy competition that turns into an exploitation Hunger Games and some satirical bits about wealth inequality and white privilege.

The talky stuff does feel a bit fuzzy, like new material that hasn't fully bedded in yet. O'Connell pitches herself as 'alternative' - anarchic, a closeted clown. This intent shines through in the strongest strand; a running gag where the OnlyFans producer is as hot and heavy over the phone as any of their biggest earners, the OTT but playful entrance. Her energy onstage dominates her editing so you don't really mind when she fails to find the funny in her less chaotic bits. Next year, I hope she builds on all this, takes command of her space, forgets about who might have squatted in 'silly billy' territory before and fully leans into her zaniest ambitions.

Imagine a straight white male act who has outdated views, performs with his bare torso showing and has definitely killed, plundered, owned slaves and openly eats red meat in his intro video. It takes the full room a while to realise Sigmund the Viking is a softly spoken clowning act and any yen for the macho Valhalla we may lust after is probably going to be left unsated.

My guess is the performer started out as a comedy yoga instructor character but soon realised a splash of Thor and Odin in his fit was far more marketable. The audience I saw it with didn't fully get their (severed) heads around the new age mish-mash... no doubt hoping for something as tight and commandeering as his Game Of Thrones inspired brochure ad. And for those of us in the know there is the insider's pleasure of watching a very mainstream audience strap into an experience that is definitively "fringe".

Ever see a show that is just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Bottles being kicked over and reverberating on stone floors with a constancy that they kill more than a few punchlines; the screams of drunken men echoing through the toilet vents at the most inopportune, vulnerable moments; the stomp of feet on the ceiling above our heads as someone picks a tune on the karaoke that meets mass approval. Meanwhile, a lot of the audience are stifling yawns not because the content of the show isn't compelling, not because it isn't a tale professionally told... but because it is delicate yet demanding, heart wrenching but subtle and at 10pm on a balmy night we are all just that little bit too festival frazzled to concurrently find the funny while also ride the sadness.

A subset of visiting American stand-ups who come to the Fringe remind me of that twee one woman showcase Emma Stone puts on near the end of La La Land. Just a little too scripted, just a little too personal and where the holy heck is the mic stand? Avital Ash (Avital Ash Workshops Her Suicide Note) is possibly the most palatable example of this mode of stand-up even if it should come with a bible of trigger warnings. There's a lot of raw tragedy covered herein and, as accomplished as Ash is as both a writer and performer, the show exists right on the borderline between comedy and spoken word theatre that happens to be by a very funny person.

I know Nanette expanded the goalposts massively about what can be considered "comedy" for many artists but I'm still of the reactionary attitude that if I pick a show from the purple section of the Fringe brochure then it needs to make me laugh considerably more than it makes me want to cry. Avital Ash overcomes my prejudices with this ambitious salvo but the disruptive vibes of The Tron after sundown really handicap her more than my personal narrow horizons ever could. Each time the clunkadunka-clink-clink-dink of bottle meeting uneven floor deflates the tension of a set up, or obliterates a thoughtful pause, you feel for the multi hyphenate wunderkind. It is a testament to her stunning composure that the audience remain in lock step with her throughout. I've seen bearpit comedians, who just want to achieve dick jokes and bantz, be flustered by a lot less.

Let's ignore the overall experience, which is unjustly out of Ash's control, and view the content. It is a commendable piece of female driven storytelling with some memorable pieces of structural scaffolding. We cover suicide, family secrets, strict religious upbringings, sexual assault, childhood shame. Any single one of those topics is some pretty hefty chew and all together we have 40 miles of tough road. And here's the praise: none of it feels tossed in for false sympathy or to add award worthy grit to a showcase hour. The hurt and pain and therapy are very organic to Ash's overall intent. Yet, even at her most defenceless, Ash reaches for silly laughs. And, for a narrative which recounts at least three predatory attacks on our narrator's body before she turned 20, the messaging remains sex positive. She also never makes the men listening and sharing her story feel like they are to blame merely because of the wider criminal actions of their gender. It is a far braver, introspective and unprotected style of confessional humour. Generous even to some of the easy villains of the piece.

You cannot deny that Ash is risking a lot here in what she reveals. Yet it gave me great pleasure when she moved off script at junctures just to cut loose with the front row. She was a natural wit in these breakouts. Though maybe asking the nerdy couple into Christian Rock "What's your favourite type of porn?" was a little too cheeky. Still, it made me laugh, and as we now know, that's all this unevolved comedy lover truly cares about. Nerdy Christians being made to feel awkward are far more welcome than bored babies making everyone else feel awkward.

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