Phil Ellis / Ralph Brown / Mark Thomas - Bobby Carroll's Fringe Diary

Written by: Bobby Carroll
Published: Friday 23rd August 2024

If you want to ease yourself into Fringe comedy right after breakfast, then check out Suse Steed's Parallelodox. It may just be the perfect start to your comedy morning. A sampler of spoken word, magic tricks, harder hitting history and biographical storytelling. All pleasant and amusing. The variety of styles Steed confidently blends together is fulfilling. Facts swirl in little random alliterative couplets. All the nebulous elements do bounce off each other in unexpected ways. She dives in and out of topics with a Radio 4 worthy cosy authority. The stuff that landed for me were her tales of speech therapy, the unspoken debt the British colonial empire holds over our education system and some genuinely delightful sleight of hand. At this time of day, you could see 3 or 4 interchangeable blokes share a bill, share a voice and most probably share a singular worldview. Or listen to a curious and intelligent woman attempt to master a half dozen Fringe trades in one pleasurable Fringe show, all at the same time.

Phil Ellis has always been determined to subvert the comedy form. If you can't join them, then beat them. Here he lampoons comedy success, fame, viral crowdwork videos and heckling overreactions with an absurdist skewering. He manages to spoof the old sad bit trauma confessional within record time and blasts improv comedians in what might just have been a for one day only, off the cuff improvisation.

Ellis's Come On And Take The Rest Of Me starts on a dance and ends on a song. It is an hour of nothing but comedy highlights. Aided and abetted by Tom Short's MC hype man who adds stings which disrupt the show as often as they pump it up. Was my favourite moment when Phil opened up the floor to ask which animals we've killed with our cars? Or when he kept smelling his fingers after touching audience members? I'm pretty Catholic in my comedy tastes, so it was probably his ludicrous verbal tour of his one room flat. Carpet tiles, milk pan and bog curtain.

Long gone is the self-destructive self-indulgence that occasionally saw an Ellis hour implode into nothing. I wouldn't say Phil has been tamed or the wildness has been left dead by the roadside, but he has harnessed all his rough edges into one of my favourite hours of comedy in a very long time. Good boy!

Gabey Lucas brings a tale all the way from the Canadian border and 19th century history with the show A Berkshire Boar Walks Into a Bar (and Gets Shot in the Face). A mouthful of a title but maybe that is the point. She regales us with the true minor North American skirmish, one that lasted over a decade involving the British, settlers and all manner of livestock. Very little laugh out loud worthy stuff happens during the retelling. The comedy is in the garbled rushed details, an awkward comedian slipping around over chunks of small incidents and long-dead men's names in a cutely spewed word soup. A show-off challenge where any gags within are often unemphasised and given zero chance to spark. You can chuckle or keep up, but you can't do both.

Lucas breaks up the torso of the story with some more recognisable stand-up time-outs and these sections have a definitive wallop and charm. Like watching a genius spell a million-letter long word at a spelling bee, A Berkshire Boar Walks Into a Bar (and Gets Shot in the Face) is more an impressive feat of memory than top comedy. But it suits an afternoon slot to a tee.

I survived Ralph Brown's My First Hostage Situation. Marking myself safe. Last year his Fringe hour was interrupted by a gunman on a Wednesday night who took over the show. Brown mines the threat to his life for humour rather than trauma in this really banging hour. I like Brown's stand-up style. He is low status and intelligent, eyes always on the punchline. So, finding himself in a farce where his life is at stake becomes less about heroics and more about his shitty luck. He spins and stretches the 15 heart racing minutes of reality into a very entertaining hour.

Brown utilises AV to display plenty of evidence as to the veracity of his tale. He also draws a telling comparison between his brush with danger and the rather less spectacular story of a performer crying after her Fringe show. He points out that it is sod's law there can only be one star-making viral story a year and he had the bad luck to be held hostage a few days after 2023's one had been and gone. For audiences there's a subtle message here about how notoriety works in the media. Put a gun to my head and I couldn't name a better storytelling show this Fringe. Local up-and-comer Brown is going to gain a lot of fans from this intense lark of a true story.

After a year off writing an award-winning play, Mark Thomas is back in his element. Doing stand-up to earn bank for a spell. He calls it doing his community service. And, man alive, does he graft through The Gaffa Tapes... his shirt is a Turin Shroud of hard work perspiration within ten minutes. Great to have him back at what he does best. Racing through topics and satire at a speed and a volume that'd put a comic half his age to shame. The hard left lay preacher's son has lost none of his sermonising magic.

Even if you don't agree with every target Thomas takes a shot at this year, you cannot deny the triple lock logic he pummels his bugbears with. Sometimes in my head I sit there listening to Thomas's socialist position on this or that and can't help but think "Yeah but what about..." Only for him to read our minds and destroy that argument with a daft but practical solution. Take for example: How do we get the billionaires to pay their tax? Thomas's solution has an absurd but populist attractiveness to it. His counter protest plans to ridicule the rise of anti-choice zealots would definitely put them in their creepy place while making us guffaw. And his salient points about how easily we let failed politicians who resign off the hook finds some joyously quirky imagery as they get their comeuppance. And, like a proper old school stand-up, he even ends with 10 minutes of blue, in his own inimitable style. Comedy perfection.

Reader, some confessions. I not only like taking a walk on the wild side but sometimes I book myself in a little downtime comedy treat with no intention of writing about it. Mad Ron's Character Comedy Carnage was my pudding choice on Thursday night. A delight just for me. Something I could just have a chuckle along to without worrying about how I was going to describe or praise it the next day. I had such a grand time though that I need to give it more than a mention. It took me back to the old days of sitting down in Pearshaped in Fitzrovia. Unsure of who was an act, who was a punter and who was just out after being sectioned?

The answer back then was 'often all three' and the same thing happened at this mixed bill. An undeniably odd bloke came in late and sat down next to me. He was wearing a strange, brightly coloured but also faded get-up. Like he had once fallen through the closing down sale of a C&A all those years ago and never changed his clothes since. The rest of the audience and I eye balled him in unison. "Oi oi, we know a plant or a stooge when we see one." Then he never sprang to life. Turns out he was a genuine audience member. It was that kinda show.

The brilliant cutlery obsessed health and safety campaigner Ian Crawford kicked off the hour in outsider style. What a delight this well-realised, obsessive character is! Tapping his spoons on the mic like a market stall trader while absolutely nailing the banality of a corporate speaker.

Gimp-masked and wrestler underpants-wearing Jerry Bakewell lost an item of clothing every time one of his puns played to silence. And there weren't that many items to begin with. The atmosphere was pregnant with fear during his cheekily slippery 10 spot. Wild!

Then Mad Ron closed the show with his trademark gruff tightness. An experience. A memory. Thanks Ron!

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