Apparently there is a way to behave if you have been accused of, served time for and then been acquitted of murder. Things you can do: be silent. Things you cannot do: smile, be odd, talk about your experience, or turn it into a debut standup hour at the Edinburgh Fringe. That last one is a bit weird, yes. But it’s a weirdness that Amanda Knox, the woman acquitted of killing her flatmate Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007, now embraces.
Everyone at the Fringe is aware of Cartwheel, named for the photograph that made it look like Knox was doing a cartwheel in police custody (“It was actually the splits”). The outrage started before the festival began, but despite more than 40,000 people signing a petition to call for her show to be cancelled, Knox has defiantly opened it to the public and the critics. Really though, very few people I’ve spoken to have actually seen the show, and fewer still are particularly bothered. As for the critics, reviews have been largely negative – but they are all by comedy critics, judging it as a comedy show. So what is it actually like to sit in a dark corner of a student union and see the face that sold a thousand tabloids? Mostly just very sad.
