EdFringe Review: Craig Hill: You’re Not Even Safe Up the Back!

Craig Hill is cheap. Surprisingly so.

To clarify – you can see this National Treasure for the same price – £16.50 a pop – as some obscure musician or dire singing troupe outwith the city centre.

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Personally, I can’t help but wish he’d charged a bit more and found himself a more spacious venue. The seats are INCREDIBLY uncomfortable, to the point that – sadly – they are a distraction from what is going on onstage. The audience sits, legs together, shoulders turned inwards – with some bottoms more than encroaching on their neighbour’s uncushioned seat – in an incredibly hot and stuffy Charteris Centre. No matter how good Hill is, your mind keeps going back to how uncomfortable your body is feeling.

Anyway, back to the show. For those new to Scotland, Craig Hill is a big name. In the noughties he was never off the telly, with his own chat show and a huge number of presenting gigs including – of all things – a live broadcast of Take the Floor for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. The hosting and panel work seem to have dried up, but he shouldn’t worry – the intervening period has found him touring internationally with his own show, which invariably includes a visit to the Edinburgh Fringe (this is his twenty-seventh year).

Hill boogies onto the stage, bursting with energy. He is attired in his trademark black kilt, T-shirt and boots and begins his cheerful but smutty routine (this is not a show to take your church-going granny to). These decades of experience show – the stage presence may come from within, but the ability to read an audience, engagingly deliver your lines and keep everyone engaged and onside comes from years of experience and training. There are minor problems with the sound at the start, but ever the pro, he takes these in his stride.

Crowd Work, Chaos, and Masterclass Stand-Up

Despite the title, it would seem you are safe up the back as Hill can’t see much beyond the stage due to the lighting. Nevertheless, he moves on to audience participation, unhampered by any form of political correctness. When he asks where people are from, hands gleefully shoot up to have a few tailored insults thrown at them (add dour Fifers to your list of people you may not want to take along). He is on the hunt for the roughest man he can find and the criterion for assessment is their occupation – he hits gold when he manages to find a gravedigger in the audience.

Even when he is not engaging directly with the audience, Hill’s set-piece anecdotes land because he knows his audience so well and they are relatable stories about a unique man interacting with people who could be in the audience. Hill explains his demographic is largely BMWs – “Big Menopausal Women” – which gets a big roar. He has an acceptable singing voice, which he makes use of throughout to tell more anecdotes.

We also get a bit of dancing, with a middle-aged (and presumably straight) man invited to join Hill onstage. The evening ends, he bounces offstage with as much enthusiasm as he came on with and then stands to shake hands and thank the audience in the foyer.

Some critics feel that Hill should focus more on a routine and less on the audience engagement – personally I feel that’s his strength and I would be happy to spend the entire evening listening to this (as would the rest of the audience, it would seem).

Yes, it’s politically incorrect but it’s not lazy – you need skill to insult your audience but have them laughing rather than walking out or sending a strongly worded email to the Evening News. The content is not just close to the bone – it drills through the bone and comes out the other side. Interestingly, although much of the show plays on Hill’s sexuality, there are no mentions of encounters with other gay men (romantic or otherwise) and the gender wars are not mentioned.

There’s a reason why Craig Hill has been so successful in Scotland for so long – he delivers a laugh-out-loud evening without fail. And let’s face it – at this moment in time we really need it.

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