Review: Phill Jupitus: You’re Wondering Why I’ve asked You Here... Stand Comedy Club (venue 5)

By KATE COPSTICK
Published on 15/08/2012 19:13

Should you happen to be one of the idiots who stalk the Fringe purely to see “him off the telly”, then don’t bother with this show.

Star rating: * * *

This is not Buzzcocks or QI, it’s live and creative stuff, and much more than Quite Interesting.

And if you arrive late or decide you need to pee in the middle of it you can’t catch up later on iPlayer and everyone will hate you. Especially me. And, probably, him off the telly.

This show is a “work in progress” by Jupitus and it is a corking creation. Jupitus takes a couple of fictional characters and offers you “an audience with”. You ask anything you like, he responds in character. I particularly loved the recently deceased (at the age of 133) bon-viveur and actor Vernon Herschel-Harvey. Married 87 times, he is a man who considers the 20th century to have peaked with the invention of the Bacardi Breezer and whose series of buddy movies with Steven Seagal I am sure we all remember fondly. Sharing the bill with him when I saw the show was Kurt Schiffer, a German U-boat captain who died in 1945 choking on a cocktail olive in Barbados. This show is a huge amount of fun and an impressive display of Jupitus’s skills. PS: don’t ask stupid questions to try to trick him. He’ll torpedo you, whichever character he is in.

Until 27 August. Today, 6:45pm