EdFringe Review: Blood, Sweat and Beers: How One Man Overcame a Complete Lack of Ability to Represent His Country

---

Mick Colliss’s ‘Blood, Sweat and Beers: How One Man Overcame a Complete Lack of Ability to Represent His Country’ falls into one of my favourite categories of Fringe shows: ruddy interesting true stories told by interesting people.

If you caught Dan Kelly’s wonderful, ‘How I Came Third In The North Korean Marathon’, in 2022, you’ll love Mick’s show.

First up, Mick Colliss is a hugely amiable chap and a fine storyteller – the sort of wit you always hope to find next to you at the bar, but rarely do. Decades spent trying to represent Australia at anything provide plenty of chuckles at his expense. This is self-deprecation wrapped in dry one-liners at its best.

By the time he mentions his first encounter with Sudoku, what comes next makes perfect sense. All Mick needs to know is that there is an international competition, and there’s no Australian team…

Sure, Mick has a few pictures and diagrams to augment his tale, but the magic’s in the telling. In owning his failures, and finding such enduring delight in eventual (if most unlikely) success, Mick creates 35 joyful minutes of quality comedy storytelling.

I think the show could be 5-10 minutes longer, however, providing a little more time to colour the show and indulge in Q+A at the end. Mick appears just as funny and deadpan on the fly.

Otherwise, this is a bomb-proof 35 minutes of genuinely funny, and interesting storytelling.

---

---