Rachel Fairburn / Stuart McPherson - Bobby Carroll's Live Comedy Diary

Written by: Bobby Carroll
Published: Monday 10th March 2025

"The urge for destruction is also a creative urge!" - Mikhail Bakunin

Rachel Fairburn manifests acid. Beating a renaissance woman path away from her profitable podcasts and tour show stand-up, she unleashes Side-Eye onto a failing humanity. Seven character monologues. Corrosive creations, realised with formal dexterity. A simple, neat overall structure - each grotesque is given roughly seven minutes to relay their abhorrent personality. The stories of the seven have a tunnelling depth. Roots of intent that reach down from the familiar suburban street to the biblical fires of hell. Each represents one of the infamous deadly sins, and all their jaded self-centred confessions criss-cross to interlink into a grander whole. Afterwards, Fairburn likens it to a twisted soap opera. In its finest plot wrinkles, Side-Eye resembles John Kennedy Toole's domino rally ensemble of cynical mischief in A Confederacy of Dunces. Either way, this is ambitious. Ambition that rewards.

Fairburn is clearly stretching long dormant comedy acting muscles here. Whether introducing us to her reinvented sociopathic Boss Bitch, or giving us an audience with a beloved acting dame with axes aplenty to grind, her characters are fully fleshed figments. One roomers, existing with only glimmers of perspective, caged in their own dented psyches.

With only a new head dress, a gift for parroting accents and a precise set of assigned hand gestures to separate each new bastard, Fairburn embodies all her satirical monsters distinctively. There is no recourse to signposts or props... except for a puerile shock anatomically correct dildo that pops in and out in different guises.

As promised in the title, there is a permanent layer of critical judgment in her profiles. The caricatures are negative but recognisable. Class divides; how a woman defines herself in a male world; how everyone feels trapped by their internal flaws. These are themes that unite the Side-Eye seven. Those flaws are gaping, horrible, damning. Fairburn has never offered much grace for society in her exemplary stand-up. In Side-Eye the condemnation feels both resignedly pessimistic and final. There are shades of Caroline Aherne and, incongruously, Alan Bennett, in Side-Eye but an artistic choice has been made to deny any mercy to these prosecutions on humankind at its worst. Closer still, a one woman Nighty Night.

The glimmer of hope in every immaculately written, deftly performed skit contains at least one punchline of outstanding beauty and ninja master accuracy. A joke about Click and Collect; the wealthy rubbing their soft hands with glee as the Edinburgh Fringe "prices out the talent" (hot dang!); or a physical gimmick involving a incel podcaster's cap slogans. This is a show jagged with 'sharp ones' that would get stuck in many an Oxbridge Footlights nepo-spawn's throat. "They" would be punching down and aping the greats. Fairburn recognises her nemesis from her Facebook school friends, an adult life lived in the privilege heavy comedy industry and a craft honed from years on the road.

And then... in the second half Rachel spoils us rotten with a straight stand-up set that felt stronger than, and more in the moment than, any 'man-and-mic' hour I experienced last year. I only recognised a couple of small bits from her previous national tour Showgirl. Making these 40 minutes of fresh, bouncy, tessellated grumpiness really all the more impressive. If this is the newly laid foundations of her next stand-up show... while perfecting Side-Eye... while setting up two new podcasts... then... Wow!

Stuart McPherson is at the spearhead of a breed of Scottish male comedians open to the allure of their own charisma. Like peers Ralph Brown and Rosco McClelland, he cruises through his own minor catastrophes and observations with very little need to either lose us in showy writing or over emphasise the trick. He gets his laughs through lo-fi confessional, beta male mirroring. His writing and voice in clean equilibrium. Diehard fans of Kevin Bridges' and Frankie Boyle's propulsive delivery or Daniel Sloss' and Fern Brady's calculated branding might be taken aback by how gently and tenderly this is all served up. Yet for my money he has the rare winning potential to reach the same stratospheric heights as all these homegrown success stories. Only, his way.

The current show, Horse, will only disappoint fans of non-stop equine material. After an opening misty memory of a Kirkcaldy horse and cart, all clip clop and neigh neigh is abandoned. The temporal enigma of a working horse from his childhood is there at the gates as a warming-up concept. Preparing us for an hour where the march of time tramples us all. Horse is a show less concerned with zeitgeist but with future shock. McPherson isn't just openly dealing with being now unavoidably an adult but also starting to feel progress is leaving him behind. On the precipice of decline, not only personally but as a generation.

McPherson is a self-confessed mouth breather, who needs hands on lessons from his girlfriend on how to brush his teeth and his only asset of value is a gift voucher to Pepe's Chicken that no member of staff knows how to use on the till system. Every routine (these three are just an example of the assortment of wonders and marvels he gifts us) is tinged with how late stage capitalism has left him unprepared and exposed for being responsible for himself. While the show remains markedly apolitical given its themes, I couldn't help but realise that McPherson was born during the slogan That Things Can Only Get Better and he is battling through at odds with that unfulfilled promise.

The recurring narrative scaffolding of Horse is a financial health check-up at his bank one day. As he ponders the now almost alien concepts of life insurance and homeownership for an artist in his age bracket, he manages to spin off into many a honed series of ideas. It proves a strong structure for his biographical chunks and wider thoughts. McPherson is a wunderkind at introducing us to a non-hack topic with minimal fuss then pummelling us with a carousel of hilarious sentences once we have our footing. An everyman with little obvious USP beyond his comedic talent, the one defining feature of his style is a passionate increase in gait and volume once he hits a gold run of punches. Given how naturally prepossessing and unembossed his stagecraft is, it was a small surprise to hear him close on 10 minutes of blue. Fear not, soft lads, these tales of a knock-off vibrating love egg and a stag-do sex show stay on brand and within his philosophy.

The hardest hitting moment of Horse is when McPherson riffs on whether he'll have kids; how maybe some life choices are being made for him out of economic malaise. Ultimately this is a soft show about tough decisions. Yet McPherson, while no cheery chappie, manages to keep things light while deep. Self-awareness and intelligence might course through all his current account angst but he ultimately seems to embrace his wins. In love, and with a few peri peri chicken wings left to cash in, Horse is a skewed celebration of a life more ordinary. Intentionally unsensational yet wonderfully intimate.

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