9:17am Wednesday 16th June 2010
By Charles Hutchinson
YOU couldn’t take notes into an exam, but no one feels the need to shout “cheat” when Edinburgh-bound comedians so brazenly carry crib cards on to the Basement stage.
One of the Fringe benefits of the upcoming comedy jamboree in Scotland is the chance to see headline acts discovering so bluntly whether their new material stands up.
You either laugh or you don’t, and Gary Delaney takes this tick-or-cross test to its logical conclusion by reading his one-liners from cards that he either discards in the Bin of Shame, drops contentedly in the IKEA Bag of Quite Good or consigns to the Maybe pile in between.
His arsenal of quick quips suits such instant scrutiny, and if the show feels as rough and ready as his appearance, you can see the genesis of a successful headline debut for this Birmingham wag after a decade of performing and writing. He lacks the finesse of a Milton Jones or Tim Vine, and his stories in-between the gags need more work, but there is a dash of the daring about him that gives him an extra gear.
Sarah Millican is getting bigger, and I don’t mean because of all the cakes she enjoys so much that she puts pictures of them on her website as some kind of culinary porn.
The north-easterner starts filming her debut sitcom in the autumn and has a rapidly expanding first solo tour coming up, and we heard the gist of it first last Sunday, notes in hand, tape recorder at her side, one eye on her watch for an hour’s limit.
Her 2010 show is called Chatterbox, after her name at school, and boy, she can chatter, even about her, um, box, as nothing seems too personal to be off limits for this mischievous storyteller with the hidden whiplash behind the genial glint. Already in full flow, she makes the everyday anything but mundane; come her autumn dates in York, she will be unstoppable.
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