COMEDY is not known for its nice guys. Every year the Fringe bars hum with stories of emotional dysfunction.
Have you heard the one about the male comedian who forced his girlfriend to watch his live video while they made out on the two-seater? Did you know about the funny man who impregnated his lover and left her holding the baby while he fled to Scarborough for a lifelong gig? Did you see Monsieur Hee Hee swimming in vintage malt while talking about his own marvellousness until the dawn broke over the waters of Leith? The other evening I heard one Scottish stand-up stretch his need to relieve himself into a whole hour of “material”. I jest not. Neither did he, sadly. Even the three-month-old baby in the audience, an expert on the subject, was heckling.
So it is, initially, an enormous relief to roll up at an Adam Hills gig and be confronted with a man so good, so genuine that you could take him straight home to your mother, if you didn’t think she might steal him from you.
“At what point did I become Robbie Williams?” laughs the Australian comedian, nominated for a Perrier Award last year for an excellent autobiographical show about his false foot, looking at his adoring prepubescent fans.
Hills’s easy charm makes his improv chats with the audience light and effortless. He struck gold the night I went with a pregnant woman in the front row who was a day overdue.
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But, sadly, this year’s set-text — a woolly exploration into the links between culture and nationality — doesn’t do his performing skills justice. A typical excerpt: he moots that aborigines are “laid-back people”. His evidence: an aboriginal friend of his was “a laid-back guy, always happy, always smiling”. Quite.
With such a structureless premise, he gets lost, segue-ing into anecdotes about the awfulness of the Bali bombing, the Australian PM’s golem-like appearance and the sexiness of the French accent. Hardly revelatory stuff. Ten minutes before time out, he brings on a mate to sing a satirical ditty about the ridiculous similes used in love songs.
It’s about as funny as (insert your own simile here)! Finally, he gives a hoary, cobbled-together, filler-rant about why women shouldn’t buy women’s magazines (because friends have told him they won’t use normal-size models because the advertisers might pull out).
You don’t always need victims to create good comedy — as Dave Gorman, Daniel Kitson and last year’s Hills show testify — but you do need a whole lot of slog and good writing.
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