Phil Kay 2008

Phil Kay’s comic mojo is a notoriously elusive beast. He has built up something of a cult following over his twenty-year career, but even his most ardent fans admit that Kay loses it quite frequently, sometimes swinging from great performances one night to dire ones the next.

He’s got two shows this year, a Greatest Hits collection of his best skits from down the years, and a new self-titled show for 2008. Curious Kay virgins might be best advised to give the former a try, by way of introduction but also because Kay at least attempts to provide a more structured show than usual, lessening the risk of catching him at his worst.

That said, Kay’s promise of a “finely crafted, well-honed” show is knowingly ironic and his slapdash style is very much intact. Shabbily dressed and with visible sweat patches, Kay oozes ageing-hippy attitude as he struts, gurns and whoops his way through a funny set that takes in a slow-motion car crash, a fight with a Polish bouncer and an incident with a presumed condom packet that in fact contained brown sauce.

Kay seems worryingly obsessed with his body and its functions, coming close to stripping off on numerous occasions and at one point making the bizarre observation that “even policemen have nipples.” Such outlandish behaviour attracts and repels the audience in equal measure, giving Kay a genuinely magnetic stage presence that comes partly from the fact that nobody knows what he’s going to do next.

The self-titled new show is a much more shambolic affair, not least because of the drunk and rowdy audience that tend to hang out at the Gilded Balloon at this sort of time in the evening. There’s a lot of enthusiasm for him in the room, but he’s constantly interrupted by hecklers and fails to build up a head of steam in his material. Without this, the whooping and gurning begin to seem a bit empty and more than a little irritating.

However, Kay gets massive kudos for the original way he deals with one troublemaker, bringing him up on stage and getting him to admit his social inadequacies to the strumming of Kay’s guitar. Not many comedians would risk that.

The legendary Kay magic glimmers tantalisingly throughout both shows, but it never quite shines through completely. Then again, there’s always the possibility you’ll catch him on a night that it does.

Read our Fringe 2007 review of Phil Kay