Craig Hill Makes Your Whole Week

Craig Hill is a bit of a nasty man. He points out the dykes in the crowd, then the ‘clean shaven’ gays, before assessing the poshness of the remaining women who aren’t dykes. After involving two girls in the balcony in some light-hearted Fife bashing, he turns to the audience with his microphone close to his mouth: ‘...and they’re fuckin’ mingers!’ he asserts, the girls’ faces suddenly volatile little ovals.

Hill is outrageously popular and the audience eat out of his quintessentially Scottish palm. This year’s act, Craig Hill Makes Your Whole Week is rather slight - his Glasgow Bee Gees impression goes down a treat, but a strangely adventurous attempt to render The Foundations’ ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ in the style of Elvis is something of a failure. It would appear that Hill’s pastiches work best when involving some facet of Scottish culture - although his Shirley Bassey send-up, where he sings ‘Who Ate All The Pies’ is, I hear, a tour de force. The Bulk of Hill’s material evolves from interaction with the audience. At one point, when talking to a lady named Kirsty, he remarks that her name sounds like a dirty website. The audience bawl and plead Hill for more, and when he says ‘log on’ with a thrust of his leatherette pelvis, the raucous applause is deafening. Hill may not be the most inventive comic, but he knows what his listeners - taking a short break from foaming at the mouth - want to hear on a Saturday night.