The Teviot Wine Bar venue is stifling hot. It’s something MC Scott Gibson is not shy in coming forward to noting in his opening salvo ahead of three, erm, interesting acts.
If Gibson was suffering from feeling uncomfortable up on the stage, it wasn’t a patch on what the assembled crowd in front endured during the slot offered by Hans Morten Hansen. His ‘homosexuals and retards’ reference when describing instructions for assembling flat pack products from a well know Scandinavian furniture store and ‘jokes’ about rape were a right old scream…The title of the show clearly an oxymoron for the Norwegian.
Thankfully it was left to Gibson to resume the order of the night, funny stuff, and his Scotstoun Bakery ‘Roll on Beans’ tale delivered the first laugh since, well, he was last holding the mic.
Not exactly a hard act to follow it has to be said, but up next was a young man in the shape of Elliot Steel.
The Cockney kid from Croydon has the swagger of confidence. Well, until he tells us he was asked for ID when purchasing paracetamol when he had a stinking cold and instead looked awkward as a 19 year old buying with Vaseline and tissues would!
Despite his lack of apparent worldliness, Steel knows all about heartache (it’s like when someone scores a 91st minute goal against you on FIFA) and isn’t afraid to discuss serious stuff like racism, where he delivers a rather fine tale of personal experience that didn’t quite have the effect he’d intended it to have.
Finally, with Morten now a distant memory, it’s time for final act. Christopher Macarthur-Boyd is fresh-faced, distinctively bespectacled and wears a helluva hair-do. His self-deprecating humour kicks-off early doors as he describes himself as ‘Gok Wan meets Ronnie Corbett’.
Another to have faced the trials and tribulations of relationships, McArthur noted that a recent break-up made him feel like he’d lost a friend, which brought an ‘awwww’ from the sympathetic audience. Then he noted his-ex was actually going out with him…
Tales of WWE wrestling masks and Bathgate fill up the allotted time slot, but I wouldn’t let that put you off going to see him on his own.
As viewed at Gilded Balloon Teviot, Saturday 13th August 2016
A Client Manager with an independent invoice financier firm during the day. Outside the office I volunteer as Media Manager across the Spartans FC family. Political hopeful. Broken / Retired Prop who played rugby for Scotland in his prime...
