Johnny Candon: One Careless Lady Owner

The Fringe is jam-packed with stand-ups who believe they have a life story that is worth paying to hear. Often, they aren’t. Yet Johnny Candon’s reflections about how being adopted has affected his life and his relationships are more enjoyable than many other shows in this vein.

In his first solo show at the Fringe, Candon entertains a responsive audience with anecdotes about his childhood in Northern Ireland—when he believed that regional programming was the BBC’s way of punishing the IRA—and about his life now as a husband and new father. Finally, he debates whether or not he should get in touch with his real parents. His conclusion: it really all depends upon how rich they are.

The adoption theme has the potential to wear a little thin on a few occasions, but Candon cleverly throws in some other arbitrary sketches—about his irrational arachnophobia, for example—to counteract this. Yet, at the same time, his material sometimes tends too much towards the randomly banal – anecdotes centring upon his favourite TV programmes and films can remain funny for only a finite length of time, and he is within one more joke of reaching that limit.

None of Candon’s material is side-splitting, yet his affable manner as he flirts and banters with the audience lends the show a genial atmosphere. What is more, Candon is down-to-earth enough to avoid seeming self-important, a risk that is run by any quasi-autobiographical show.