Sideshow: The Weirdest Show on Earth

Watching this the show on a Monday, it is hard to get a good sense of the atmosphere it might generate on peak nights, but with ten well-behaved people in the audience, and five disappointingly samey and rather down-to-earth acts, mine is a decidedly underwhelming evening.

And I’m quite sure that there are weirder shows on Earth, and even at the Fringe, that the curious are choosing to flock to instead of this. La Clique in the Spiegel Garden instantly comes to mind which, for double the cash, gets you two hours of the poshest, most memorable weirdisms you can ever expect to come across without ardently questing for the stuff. You’ll even get weirder in amongst the artificial and forgettable antics of the Jim Rose Circus, though you’ll leave feeling shallow for having indulged it.

Weird here is altogether cleaner. Often obscene, but in a savagely deliberate and urgent kind of way, as if the performers googled "bad taste" and made a rhyme out of the search results half an hour before the show. There are three musical acts, a bafflingly unceremonious balloon artist and a short nurse-themed burlesque number by the ubiquitous Missy Malone. Of the musicians, one comes as Hitler (Frank Sinazi) and croons about the Third Reich, and another (Des O’Connor), the headlining act, sings about necrophilia on a ukulele. If things ever get too uncontroversial, there is always a gimp on hand to rectify the situation.

The line-up changes every night, making this a hit-and-miss affair, but this muggy venue is hardly a pleasant place to be, and with just an hour’s worth of entertainment for your tenner (technically this includes an ensuing club night, but oxygen problems make this quite an unappealing prospect), I can think of plenty of surer, more consistently fulfilling alternatives for the same price. Try, for example, the Bongo Club Cabaret.