Just for laughs

From poets and rising musical stars to a wave of old and new comediennes, this year’s fringe encompasses a wide range of comic entertainment.

The rapid growth of the fringe has made the choice of comedy shows tougher than ever for visitors to Edinburgh, City of Dreams. Once, stand-up comedy was a mere sideshow at the fringe. Now it has snatched centre stage with a diversity and range of quality unparalleled in the world.

In a sense the fringe is democracy in action. The fringe guide, for instance, does not differentiate between shows by top international comedians and those delivered by hopelessly self-deluded and over-optimistic newcomers. They all get exactly the same number of words to describe their turns and the same chance to boost their appeal with an advertisement. Moreover, their entries appear in alphabetical order. This is wonderful in my estimation. Everyone has the same chance of grasping the nettle of comedy greatness. And if they fail, they only have themselves to blame.

Wil Hodgson’s experience of the Edinburgh fringe started at the Pleasance as a technician for comedian John Oliver. Within two years, Hodgson returned to Edinburgh with his own full-length show, scooping the 2004 Perrier Best Newcomer award. With his camp, punk look and Chippenham-fixated material, he was a memorable act from the start and attracted the kind of accolades from established comedians that only the truly unusual could achieve. Veteran stand-up star Mark Thomas called him the “light at the end of the tunnel for British comedy”. This year, Hodgson makes his return to the Pleasance with a show entitled Straight Outta Chippenham (August 5-27, excepting 13). He says it is like returning home.

“I’ve come full circle,” he says. “I loved being a techie on John Oliver’s show in 2002. Lots of full-known comedians like Daniel Kitson dropped in and I got to know them. It was the most fun I’ve ever had.”

Hodgson says his comedy stems from Chippenham because it is almost all he knows. “I have led a small town life,” he admits. Not that he sings its praises. “I have grown up in Chippenham and can’t afford to leave. I wouldn’t say I love it or hate it.” Although his name and face are increasingly well known, Hodgson has no desire to move to the metropolis, and is glad he did not cut his teeth on the London comedy circuit.

“New comedians ask me for advice and I say, ‘Don’t do the London comedy circuit!’. I think the London circuit will probably kill itself.

“People put up posters saying star comedians are going to be on at a venue, but when the audience turns up, all they see is ten open spots. I was gigging in Bristol and the south-west from 2001 on the same bill as comics like Phil Nichol, Craig Campbell and Ian Cognito. I knew my place on those bills and learnt my trade,” Hodgson says.

Wherever he goes, he says, bigots verbally abuse him. Indeed, his look seems to have united the full gamut of prospective tormentors. “Some are old Teddy boys who hate punks, others hippies who feel the same way,” Hodgson says. “Others think that I am what gay people look like, and have a go at me for that. I have not been physically attacked for a while, but I’ve come very close.” He says his focus at Edinburgh will be entirely on the show, he won’t be out on the town baiting the bigots!

Another Edinburgh name with experience of the downside of comedy is Jim Jeffries, a charismatic Australian who is fast becoming a big star. Jeffries, who is taking his show - entitled 30 - to the 220-seater E4 Udderbelly’s Pasture, was punched on stage at the Manchester Comedy Store after a typically robust heckler put-down unintentionally upset a victim of child abuse.

“How was I to know?” he demands, indignantly. “He didn’t get upset about any of the other things I’d said to his wife. If there was one joke that upset people, I’d take it out of my set. But it is a different gag every time. What can I do?”

Jeffries has huge presence as a comedian and the ability and material to lift any comedy night. However, he risks all with gags and throwaway lines designed to push the envelope. Behind this approach lurks a genuine belief that he should be allowed to say whatever he likes whenever he likes. A particular bugbear with him currently is the ire he causes with certain women audience-members with jokes about cavernous female genitalia.

“Horrible, ghastly scenes have happened at gigs,” he admits, “yet men would never challenge a woman comic who had told the equivalent - a small dick gag.”

Perhaps fortuitously, he says he is playing down sex in 30, which focuses more on his own dysfunctional and violent upbringing in Australia. “I am really looking forward to doing the show,” he says. “I was selling out last year in a 130-seater venue, but I don’t think I’ll manage that all the time in a 220-seater.”

Certainly in terms of the shock end of the market, there is plenty of competition. Fellow Australian Brendon Burns is back with So I Suppose This is Offensive Now (Pleasance Dome, August 5-26 - not 13 or 20), and even a glance at the publicity material tells you it will not be a show for the faint-hearted. And the master of shock, Jerry Sadowitz, returns with Comedian, Magician, Psychopath (E4 Udderbelly’s Pasture, August 5-27, excepting 14).

What is magical about comedy at the fringe is the sheer breadth of entertainment, from poetry in the form of Luke Wright (Luke Wright, Poet & Man, Pleasance Courtyard, August 5-25), to a wave of comediennes, new and old, including Viv & Fizz (Gilded Balloon, August 1-27, except 14), Trippplicate’s Timetripppers (Pleasance Courtyard, August 1-27 - except 14), veteran Faith Brown, who is doing two shows at the Pleasance Courtyard (August 1-27, except 14 and 21), and Anglo-Iranian comedienne Shappi Khorsandi in Carry On Shappi (Pleasance Dome, August 1-27).

Musical comedy is also well represented with rising stars, such as Christian Reilly - How to Rock (Pleasance Courtyard, August 5-27, except 15). Reilly turned professional comedian after years on the road in comedy superstar Rich Hall’s backing band. “I’d have done it sooner if I had not been working with Rich. It is intimidating seeing someone so brilliant at comedy,” he admits.

Professionally it was like going back to square one for Reilly - trying to build up a decent set on the unforgiving London circuit. “I invited Rich to come to see my first try-out slot,” Reilly recalls. “But he said, ‘I am not a big fan of public execution’.”

Reilly persevered and has worked his way to How to Rock, a full-length show based on the tracks that have most influenced his life. Is there a big market for musical comedy at the fringe? “There is a big market for a funny market,” says Reilly. “If it is funny, the audiences will come.”

Variety is flourishing in other ways too. Comedy double acts - male and female - and of all shapes and sizes are scattered across the fringe.

Few are more colourful than Men With Bananas - man mountain Mark Logan and his curly-haired companion Dave Nicholds, who are performing in Bananageddon (Madogs on George Street, August 5-25, except 10).

Nicholds says the Bananas were born out of a classic fringe nightmare. “We came to Edinburgh in 2005 as part of a five-piece sketch group called Sideshow Society. We all spent a lot of money on the show, didn’t get audiences and fell out! That fringe was the end of the group.”

Borrowing a theme from one of Sideshow’s sketches, Men With Bananas was born - performing amusingly daft sketches, sometimes related to bananas. This year, they have plumped for a free venue, but Nicholds stresses that the Bananas have not skimped on quality.

“We have hired Logan Murray as our director, after his success directing We are Klang,” he says. “We are doing everything you would do for a show in the Pleasance Courtyard, while believing in the ethos of the fringe.”

“Indeed, there is a veritable embarrassment of comedy riches at Edinburgh this year, and the good news for audiences is that whether acts have spent a thousand pounds or £20,000, no one is trying to put on a poor show.”