Showing @ The Stand, Edinburgh until Sun 10 Aug @ 12:50
There are plenty of comedians on the Fringe who you wouldn’t like to see in a lunchtime slot. Certain in your face, splenetic comics might jar as you fit some festivaling in between wandering round Jenners. But Lucy Porter’s brand of rambling, discursive, utterly charming, but also deceptively sharp self-mockery is a great way to kick off an August afternoon.
Over the course of her hour she darts over subjects as diverse as her pogonophilia, challenging friendships, family life, auditions, her love of Russia and post-coital cleansing regimes. She delivers all this with a joy in the telling that allows you to forgive any meandering or – if you had seen last year’s outing, any recycled material.
Porter is celebrating the tenth anniversary of her first Fringe visit, over that decade she’s done bigger and more structured shows, but she’s never looked more comfortable or more in command than she does in this afternoon delight. The Stand has the intimacy that suits her chatty disposition allowing her to interact with her audience like old friends. If it’s the simply pleasure of good comedy well done then you can’t go far wrong spending your lunchtime with Lucy.