Festival Comedy
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JIMMY MCGHIE Having a good old moan about life The All-Powerful Warrior Who with His Endurance and Inflexible Will to Win Goes from Conquest to Conquest Leaving Fire in His Wake is surely the longest Fringe show title this year. How did Jimmy McGhie get it in the brochure? ‘My title did use up the word limit and I’m quite glad because I’m really bad at writing show copy, doing PR and answering interview questions. Doing this is making me feel a little bit sick.’
OK, deep breath and answer this one: what’s the show about? ‘Last year was really nerve-wracking. Now I’m more comfortable with doing an hour each night. It’s about how un- mighty I am and how much I wish I could be more dynamic. I also have a pointless and stubborn refusal to move with the times.’ Though McGhie likes nothing better than an old-man moan about life, his comedic inspirations lie in a happier place. ‘There’s a woman who works in my local Sainsbury’s overseeing the automatic tills. She’s always laughing and cracking jokes, utterly unself- conscious and effortlessly amusing. She’s clearly mad as a bag of spoons but just couldn’t give a shit. People like that remind me what a pleasure and privilege it is to do this for a living.’ (Marissa Burgess) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, 7–30 Aug, 9.45pm, £8.50–£9.50 (£7–£8). Previews until 6 Aug, £5.
RADIO HOOHAH Double act go on a twisted adventure around the airwaves Dubbed a ‘French and Saunders for the Facebook generation’, Octavia Mackenzie and Ashley McGuire are
NEXT ISSUE OUT WEDNESDAY 11 AUGUST 42 THE LIST 5–12 Aug 2010
known in Fringe circles for their surreal spin on the everyday, from death to ‘the absurdity of Britain’s class system’ (find ‘Kensington Rhyming Slang’ on YouTube). This year’s show, Radio Hoohah, is an absurdist take on the world of radio. ‘We both love surreal humour, as well as a bit of darkness, and we wanted the chance to explore our childish side too,’ says McGuire. ‘We love Radio 4, but it’s also a goldmine for comic ideas. There are some programmes on there that are unintentionally absurd, and we wanted to highlight that. And we just love the idea of an audience having to pretend they are at a radio studio, coming to watch some live recordings where things get a little
twisted.’
With Anne Widdecombe on a Notting Hill Carnival float, an octogenarian romance novelist reading her latest book in cockney rhyming slang and Leonora Velvety Constable- Wheeler’s tales of being stuck in the loo and having her skirt accidentally tucked into her vagina, it sounds deliciously so. (Kate Gould) ■ Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, 7–30 Aug (not 16, 23), 6.50pm, £8.50–£9.50 (£7–£8). Previews until 6 Aug, £5.
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GEORGE RYEGOLD Applying surgery to a subtle character creation
For someone who has suffered crippling stage fright, it seems extraordinary that we have even heard of Dr George Ryegold. Having learned from his agent that a parting of the ways might have to come, Toby Williams (the actor behind the maverick medic) told her that while it may have seemed like he was less than busy, some stand-up gigs were coming his way. Convincing her of this falsehood, Williams quickly booked up an open mic slot, a debut that was less than impressive: but then again, he had managed to land himself onto a folk music bill. ‘It was absolutely dreadful,’ he recalls without a word of a fib. ‘I walked into this pub in King’s Cross and there was a girl on stage playing the harp; my legs nearly turned me around and took me out of there on their own.’ His second gig, on Malcolm Hardee’s Wibbley Wobbley boat, went no better, but he did make some comedy friends and gained handy contacts. The acutely shy Williams was happy to be hiding within
Ryegold, a subtly constructed surgeon whose florid descriptions of the delicate parts of the human body and the awful things that can go wrong with it led one critic to dub him ‘as sick as Jim Jefferies, but with the vocabulary of Stephen Fry’.
Initially, Williams believed that being George RyegoId would see him through this bedding-in period of his stand-up career, after which he would ‘grow some balls and be myself’. But he now seems happy to stay in the skin of the good doctor for a while longer.
How much of the darker elements of the conditions and afflictions he speaks of on stage come from his own life experiences? ‘From last year’s show, the pube net [don’t ask] really happened, though obviously exaggerated to fit in with the character. And once, I couldn’t walk for a short while but none of the doctors ever found out what happened there.’ Now firmly on his feet, Toby Williams and his comedy career are both in rude health. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, 7–30 Aug (not 16), 10pm, £9–£9.50 (£7.50–£8). Previews until 6 Aug, £5.