Bobby Davro / Harriet Kemsley / Paulina Lenoir - Bobby Carroll's Fringe Diary

Written by: Bobby Carroll
Published: Sunday 11th August 2024

My parents never go to see live comedy without us. We drag them out to it. Like jazz or a movie as something to do that isn't going to a pub, reading every item on the menu aloud to each other and then ordering one sandwich with two plates to share. Yet when they went on a cruise a few years back they chose to see Bobby Davro twice. Twice! The clean main ballroom show and then his after hours BLUE show in a cabaret bar. I was jealous. I didn't want to be trapped on a cruise but I truly did want to see the Bobby Davro after hours BLUE show. Nine year-old me probably held Davro in the same esteem as Eddie Murphy, Rik Mayall, Jimmy Cricket, Harry Enfield and Steve Guttenberg. These days I couldn't name you one of those ITV Saturday night entertainment shows where he dominated the UK mainstream for a decade but back in the day I loved him. From my home cut hair right down to my He-Man slippers.

So discovering he was going to be this year's "I'll show 'em" blast from the past, the obligatory light entertainment veteran to take on the snobby elitist arts festival, I booked two tickets tout de suite. My wife had reservations but I went in to it with a pure open heart. Selling out the Frankenstein's bier keller on a Tuesday night is no mean feat in and of itself. Davro is independent of both the Big Four and the Indie Six promoters and attracts a niche that the Fringe doesn't naturally cater for. They're old, they're doddery and, fuck me, to a man, they're leathery. The queue that snaked through the gothic themed pub was less Dawn Of The Dead, more White Zombie. Pretty much everyone in earshot of us had seen Nina Conti the night before. These folks might read 'Two Stars from The Guardian Culture Section' as a seal of quality. Vape vape vape. Grumble grumble grumble. Within minutes of sitting we were singing the refrain 'Bobby Davro Bobby Davro' on viking feasting tables like a darts crowd who had uniformly turned up in fancy dress as Ronnie Biggs. Child, we weren't in Stamptown anymore.

Davro - all in black, tailored suit, shirt buttons open down to his gut - comes out sprightly. A call-and-response song with silly faces and a stream of gags about the sheer number of his celebrity peers who got caught noncing. John "Not Guilty X 3" Leslie is in the front table and gets a solid, but good natured, rinsing. Davro is on fire. Twenty minutes in, massive smirk on my face, I turn to Natalie and whisper, "He's going to get a British Comedy Guide Recommends".

It can't last, he doesn't sustain the vibe. Why? Well, this is the Bobby Davro after hours BLUE show. "Strictly 18+." He has laid down the gauntlet calling it Everything Is Funny... If You Can Laugh At It. His screens warn us before his name appeared in lights that this ain't for "Snowflakes" or "Wokes". And, when he tries to appeal solely to the gammons in the mists, things stumble. In the first glorious sprint, the paedophilia of his era is chomped away at in a daft, harmless way. Most jokes end in a clever pun or a dumb twist, always with priceless, seasoned timing. Switcheroos. Later, references to asylum seekers and women's looks just lack this precision; the response is minimal. Even from those who have turned up for the old school controversial 'proper comedy' don't laugh at it half as much as the irreverent, rubber faced, playful stuff.

A bad example is his impression of Stephen Hawking. A lot of physical effort is put into lampooning the dead genius' physical impairments. And it would have felt mouldy or too near the knuckle fifteen years ago. I put my head in my hands and sighed "Oh... Bobby Davro...". But then there's a cheeky wee sound FX stinger that is so underhand I couldn't help but laugh. Would I be comfortable snorting at portions of this if I were sat between, say, Chloe Petts and Sophie Duker? Definitely not. Yet Davro isn't Jim Davidson or Bernard Manning and the dank stuff is not only out of his wheelhouse but it feels so unaligned with the bulk of the show. Even ignoring any artistic intent, the simple fact is Davro the human being might be impish but there isn't anything terminally cunty about the entertainer that taints him like the obstinate bully boys who came before him.

Davro self-lampoon's his erectile dysfunction. At his sharpest he is the butt of every story whether tall tale or B-list anecdote. Some of the material feels ancient but in all honesty he was at his peak when these standards were doing the rounds. Most might very well be Davro originals tarnished from overuse.

Davro ends the show on a series of impressions and cabaret songs. His Trump is bang on the money. Full of wonderfully reprocessed mannerisms and self-immolating soundbites. A recent stroke means he cannot manage too many moments of mimicry. His voice has gone, his heart can't take the transformations. Yet he pointedly doesn't change the words to his closing rendition of Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me. Performing both sides of the duet with heart, no snark. It is a unifying moment, a classy inclusive tribute to two of Britain's finest gay performing artists.

Davro is a trooper, the room leaves happy. I wish I saw him with a full tank. Maybe cruise ship comedy has warped his settings a little but I think he would attract the same crowd even if he did jettison his attempts to shock. He doesn't have to throw the gurning baby out with the bathwater. The woke snowflake mob weren't buying tickets so why should he pander to them. But maybe they just might if the title of his next Fringe show wasn't quite such a snub to how they want their world to work. And at the very least the show kicks out exactly at the moment the cheesy animatronic monster comes to life in the tourist trap pub above. My wife loved this bonus, all transgressions forgiven.

It is jolting to realise Harriet Kemsley, who I remember vividly taking her first steps on the London comedy scene, has now experienced more major life milestones than me. Motherhood, divorce and appearing on Mastermind. Hers is such a complex, developed stage persona. Breezy, bubbly, confessional scraping against naive yet savage wit. There's so many strings to Kemsley's bow that watching her take a room by force is as beautiful as a symphony and as taut as a bridge cable.

Life after divorce is 2024's show's raw throughline. Such a bittersweet event allows Kemsley to weave in just as many "I'm a walking disaster area" social and emotional pratfalls. Pop a beret on her, get a camera crew on her and within a year you'd have enough found footage to reboot Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em with a hip gender reversal and a feminist lean. Her unguarded vulnerability leaves her open; a celebrity tell all where she is mentioned clearly wounds her deeply. Yet she is a stand-up first and foremost and mines her trauma for guffaws with a chiselled precision. Her sympathy for sloths, men trapped in giant ear costumes, and her comedian ex, show an emotional maturity that her near constant reckless clumsiness camouflages.

This has to be Hazza's funniest show yet. The laughs cascade into each other at her breathless mile a minute pace, the glittering gold rush. I can't imagine anyone else is currently riding their room this hard and fast with such a layered yet honed voice. One of my favourite and funniest performers still 'at it', she makes me start counting the years. Kemsley is now a stone cold veteran of the British comedy scene and thoroughly deserved too.

Exquisite misanthropy is back. Stephen Carlin, with his lengthy swirling contrarian sidesteps at depressive edginess, is up at the Fringe again for the first time this decade. The first twenty minutes of Frenemies feels like time travelling. Back to a day when taboo, timing and triviality simmered over into comedy clubs happily without content warnings and disclaimers. Oh, his comeback hour is a bleak delight.

What pleasure seeing the towering Scot compare non drivers to the very worst of humanity and breakdown Olympians' mental health woes. Carlin's stuff on pest control has more understanding of the situation of economic migrants than many a wetter, handwringing take. There is genuine risk here. The second half with Carlin's tongue-in-cheek rankings of the day jobs of paedophiles and the superior psychology of rats split his hot little ventilation free karaoke room. Yet the shadowy poetry and his burring cadence fulfilled a yen in me and others who endured the dead air heat. An umami flavour we see less and less of at the Fringe. It doesn't all need to be universality and introspection, not when the writing and delivery are so top tier.

The right man, the right show, the wrong venue. Who wants to bake in a brightly lit box with half the audience facing each other? Not the optimum atmosphere for this form of stand-up sadly.

Knight Knight is a simple clowning show from Madeleine Rowe. They come on dressed on point like a Playmobile knight come to life. With minimal props and stretched out interactions they tug the audience over the one sustained joke. Rowe's confidence in the bit is commendable. It is a single plate spinning for over an hour yet it never wobbles. If you'd like to see one person lark about with plastic toys and a convincing lisp then this Arthurian / Shakespearean spoof might innocently cleanse your comedy palette.

Paulina Lenoir is the first debut hour of this August that feels like a masterpiece. A totalitarian performance poet takes us through a woman's life cycle. Often non-verbal intricate acid ballet. Salvador Dali Punch & Judy tricks. Costume changes that smother her domineering personality like existential cages. Almodovar meets Lynch. Every clowning technique, every physical theatre FX, is utilised to produce something dangerous, something sensitive, and something thought provoking.

The audience fully embraced this cocktail of amazing dresses, dry ice and demented interaction. There was risk and seduction coursing through all our veins. Lenoir has so many talents and every trick in the book is gorgeously delivered. Her Puella Eterna show is the perfect showcase for a physicality that shudders from judders to gracefulness. Who is she? This renaissance woman enigma? There's more than a little of Lisa Kudrow in her incongruous happy inviting smile. It is a whole thing, tricky to dismantle in writing. If you know someone looking for a true Fringe experience you couldn't hope for anything better than suggest they enter this slinky cabaret of the body.