Fringe Binge 2017 Show #24 - Phill Jupitus - Up The Stand; The Stand Comedy Club, 1630, 09-Aug-17

Mr. Jupitus is doing a number of shows at this year's Fringe. As well as this more traditional stand-up show he's doing a character-based show, a reflective drawing show, Whose Line Is It Anyway and who knows what else. He's a busy man ...

I've always liked him so was looking forward to seeing this. And by and large it was pretty good.

I've had to put that qualification in there as, although at the time of writing I'm only a third of the way through Fringe '17, many of the shows, if they don't really stand out, are starting to merge into one. And thus it is with this one. It's good, I laughed a lot but I can't really remember too much of what was said. It started with him playing guitar and singing a song about what bastards owls are (the owls are not what they seem). He then started playing another song and I started to inwardly groan thinking "Is this what the whole show is going to be like?" Fortunately it wasn't.

He's a great storyteller. Many anecdotes were relayed - his first visit to the Edinburgh Festival was when he was an opening spoken-word political act for Billy Bragg in the mid-80s (which went down as well as you might think) and he spun a great yarn about getting caught speeding (both when Bragg's manager was driving and later when he was) after crossing the border and being stopped by Scotland's most existential and philosophical traffic policeman. He would later tell a tale about his own family and the recent marriage of his daughter to her partner - another lady, which Mr. J was perfectly accepting of but came with a minefield of etiquette issues (who goes first in the Father of the Bride speeches?)

It was a good show. Very amusing, poignant and informative in places. And Mr. J is a great raconteur and very pleasant company for an hour. Just nothing really outright hilarious. Still, very worth a watch.