There's a plaice for us
When you’ve spent time in the comedy world you develop strange prejudices. My particular bete noire is photos of performers with fish – and I’m not talking about Will Smith, whose Assembly Rooms show is entirely based on his childhood obsession with the lead singer from Marillion (and is incidentally the Perrier favourite on one strictly for fun betting website).
This phobia started earlier this year in London when The Hollow Men’s press shot featured them with a big fish. Snapper maybe. They are a perfectly good, traditional sketch combo, but there is something about the piscine reference that cries out “hey, look at us, we are wacky and the natural successors to Monty Python”. And of course, you can bet your pristine Fawlty Towers DVD boxed set that they aren’t.
Of course this is a completely irrational prejudice. Off the scale, you could say. Alex Horne, whose funny current show about learning Latin – it’s great honest – is on at the Pleasance, once did a cod-psychology show called Talking To Fish which was just as funny. And one year the Festival Fringe programme had a fish on the front cover which didn’t harm anyone. Presumably someone somewhere is toiling over a PhD thesis called ‘Fish In Comedy: From Palin To Marlin’ as we speak.
The reason I'm writing this is that a there is a comedy/theatre crossover show called Milk and even though one of the people on their poster looks a bit like a bespectacled Johnny Depp I can’t bear to think about seeing it because the duo in the picture have insisted on being shown with fish coming out of their mouths.
Maybe, to paraphrase Sir John of Cleese, we should forgive them, they are from Spain. I don’t think I can, but to make some amends, here’s a plug. Milk is at the Pleasance Courtyard at 5.35pm. It features two crazed clowns and like most other shows here, the Fringe programme describes it as “award-winning”. Now that’s another thing that gets my back up, all the shows that endlessly boast they have won awards...oh no, don’t get me started, I was just calming down.
Fin
This phobia started earlier this year in London when The Hollow Men’s press shot featured them with a big fish. Snapper maybe. They are a perfectly good, traditional sketch combo, but there is something about the piscine reference that cries out “hey, look at us, we are wacky and the natural successors to Monty Python”. And of course, you can bet your pristine Fawlty Towers DVD boxed set that they aren’t.
Of course this is a completely irrational prejudice. Off the scale, you could say. Alex Horne, whose funny current show about learning Latin – it’s great honest – is on at the Pleasance, once did a cod-psychology show called Talking To Fish which was just as funny. And one year the Festival Fringe programme had a fish on the front cover which didn’t harm anyone. Presumably someone somewhere is toiling over a PhD thesis called ‘Fish In Comedy: From Palin To Marlin’ as we speak.
The reason I'm writing this is that a there is a comedy/theatre crossover show called Milk and even though one of the people on their poster looks a bit like a bespectacled Johnny Depp I can’t bear to think about seeing it because the duo in the picture have insisted on being shown with fish coming out of their mouths.
Maybe, to paraphrase Sir John of Cleese, we should forgive them, they are from Spain. I don’t think I can, but to make some amends, here’s a plug. Milk is at the Pleasance Courtyard at 5.35pm. It features two crazed clowns and like most other shows here, the Fringe programme describes it as “award-winning”. Now that’s another thing that gets my back up, all the shows that endlessly boast they have won awards...oh no, don’t get me started, I was just calming down.
Fin
posted by Bruce Dessau @ 6:45 PM
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