Skinheads, Readers' Wives and My Little Ponies 2

Clip from his DVD, out on Go Faster Stripe

More Wil Hodgson videos

Wil Hodgson: Punkanory
Live Review

Performing his seventh consecutive solo show at the Fringe this year – the first won him the Perrier newcomer award in 2004 - Hodgson has become something of an institution.

It’s reassuring that amid the Fringe craziness that there’s a room somewhere in town where you can go and listen to the world according to the idiosyncratic Hodgson. And a beguiling world it is.

For those not in the know (where have you been?) he’s a comic with leftie sensibilities: a feminist who celebrates the female form in all its wonderful variations in size or age, he’s a skinhead but what hair he does sport is pink, he has armfuls of Care Bear tattoos and is a resident of Chippenham, Wiltshire, who despises a small-town frame of mind.

Today there are further tales of the above but in particular the show focuses on his collections; he has Care Bears, My Little Ponies, Spice Girls memorabilia, oh and a cat to perturb any nosy people who go poking about the sofa where his Care Bears live. To one side of the stage he has a soapbox on which to physically stand when he feels the metaphorical need to mount it.

As well celebrating his own memorabilia, Hodgson poignantly recalls the meticulously and lovingly assembled collection of an another local character who died, leaving his precious items of fandom and pretty much nothing else. He also divulges the whereabouts of a spectacular car boot sale in Edinburgh where he almost, but not quite, bought a flintlock pistol.

As ever, his ideas are inventive and invested with a beautiful turn of phrase, where else would you hear parallels drawn between Care Bear land Care-a-Lot and Stalin’s regime?

It has to be said that there’s something of the religious service about the small, quiet crowd sat beneath the stone arches of the Caves on a weekday afternoon listening to Hodgson’s sermon; a passionate diatribe by a man genuinely enthusiastic about his subjects. Amen to that.

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A one-man new wave of comedy. One of the pearliest pearls on the circuit.

Joan Culloty, August 2004

Funny fast and thought provoking. A thoroughly entertaining entertainer. But I will never look at a care-bear quite the same again. He has never failed to deliver every time I have seen him.

V J Collett, July 2004

I have just witnessed a shocking pink whirlwind of comedy genius. Superlatives can not express how good Wil was tonight. He held an audience mesmerised on an otherwise difficult night. Wil at his best is truly a sight not to be missed. If he continues on this form a Perrier awaits.

Matt Drayton, June 2004

I found him very funny, and love his attitude.

Tina, May 2004

Class.

Nik Hill, April 2004

Wonderful

Steve Hall, March 2004

Superb, A breath of fresh air against bills of comedy dominated by white, young, wanking, mysoginist men, Will has the potential to go as far as he wants, my view is he will shun the road of commerciality as has Kitson and concentrate on his comedy which is cathartic, thought-provoking, and very dark.

Adam Franklin, March 2004

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