At Chortle's Fast Fringe

July 2011

More Wendy Wason videos

Wendy Wason's introduction to stand-up came with her first job, at The Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh .

But her background is in acting job, with roles in Taggart, Fun At The Funeral Parlour and Coupling. She even played an obsessive Bill Hicks fan who becomes a stand-up in the 2000 British film, Resurrecting Bill.

She debuted at the Edinburgh Festival in 2001 in Trevor Lock's play, What You Really Want, alongside Phil Nichol, Sarah Kendall - and had to strip off while four months pregnant.

By the time she was pregnant with her second child she was filming The Libertine with Johnnys Depp, Malkovich and Vegas.

When her son was 8 weeks old, she started stand-up. In 2005 she was a finalist in the Funny Women contest; and the following year she was a finalist in the first Scottish Comedian Of The Year competition.

Wendy Wason In Other People's Secrets
Live Review

Psst! Wanna know a secret? Wendy Wason’s 2010 show is packed with opinions on a huge range of topics, imparted with warmth and charm from this always-engaging gossip. But it’s in serious need of both a stronger sense of purpose, and a few more gags.

This inviting Edinburgh-born comic admits she’s something of a scatterbrain, which makes her delivery naturally conversational. But when you’ve a topic as broad as this, focus makes all the difference.

As you might expect from her previous shows, she indiscreetly discloses the secrets of family and friends – and, fair play, some of her own as well – to build a conspiratorial rapport. Her ambitions, though, are greater than this and she touches on weightier topics such as the Hutton Inquiry cover-up, celebrities who carefully manage their image with the aid of duplicitous publicists, why we tolerate MPs who get up to sexual shenanigans but not financial ones, and the erosion of privacy through social networking sites such as Facebook.

She has smart views on most of this, but each does not relate to the next, so there’s no strong through line to link these diverse and densely-concentrated selection of topics. Plus she is prone to doing far too much factual set-up for mediocre jokes. She admits this show has taken form over its festival run, but it’s still not there, in need of a strong directorial touch to stop that brain ‘bouncing around’, as she puts it, and draw out the gags.

Wason is good company, though, and not always in a soft, affable way – some of the stronger segments come when she gets agitated, breaking her polite exterior to seethe: ‘And another thing I can’t stand…’

She might not yet have truly unlocked the secret of success in stand-up, but each year, this knowing and charismatic comic takes another step closer towards it.

Fun and confident delivery, but her material isn't that strong.

Jo Phelan, October 2007

Brilliant in Farnham last night - some good and edgy stuff concealed by a breezy delivery

Gordon, October 2006

Saw her at the Afrobar in reading last night, and she has a great stage persona with some good material to back it up. Good one.

Dave, April 2006

Sexy, sassy and made me laugh. Will look out for her in the future

GM, February 2006

What does it matter if she was once an actress - she's funny. She was brilliant at The Stand in Edinburgh the other night.

Maggie from Edinburgh, January 2006