There is no more uproarious opening sequence at this year’s fringe than Phil Ellis’s. Yes, it’s really happening: he really is dressed in a slinky black bodysuit, throwing wild shapes among the crowd while caterwauling along to Jellicle Cats. Everything about Ellis’s Excellent Comedy Show dials up the silly and incongruous to 11, as the Manchester man tries on as many comedy styles as can be crammed into a fringe hour. Observational, improvised rap, heart-on-sleeve “traumedy” – it’s all here, and the joke, usually, is that Ellis is crap at all of it.
Sometimes, that serves as an excuse for actually being a bit crap – and that’s not always redeemed by Ellis snorting derisively throughout at the shabbiness of the wares on offer. The conceit of a shambolic sad-sack winging it in comedy is belied, too, by Ellis’s successful Radio 4 sitcom and nomination this week for the Edinburgh comedy award (whose panel prize he won in 2014 with the chaotic kids’ show Funz and Gamez). But there’s no denying the 41-year-old has found another entertainingly helter-skelter format for his shtick here, as he teams up with his two-piece band (Cammy Sinclair and Cammy Phair), splicing the boisterous-but-blighted gags with high-kicking pop classics by Elton John, David Bowie and Petula Clark.
The 70s working men’s club-meets-absurdism vibe recalls Vic and Bob, but Ellis is no one but his own man here. He’s got a routine about his therapy for OCD, spoof TikTok videos, and jokes about the forlornness of house-share life. There’s a faux-tender moment about wanting to be a dad that gets a doozy of a punchline. There’s an anti-climactic story about an embarrassing winking incident, and restless self-commentary by our host on how badly this or that joke has landed.
Ellis’s biggest laughs come when he pivots in a heartbeat from roustabout musical mayhem to bleak bulletins on mental ill health and midlife failure. If I found the joke about his loserdom overstretched, the show is undeniably great fun, an anarchic anthology of barely acquired skills by a lord of misrule hellbent on your, and his own, merriment.
At Monkey Barrel Comedy at The Hive, Edinburgh, until 27 August
