Tour review by Jay Richardson

Harry Hill closes Pedigree Fun with a uniquely peculiar rendition of My Way that sets him apart from the showbiz hackery of countless cover versions, confirming his status as the cartoonish oddball who snuck into the mainstream, an absurdist for the masses.

Though he chides himself for his formulaic voiceover on Saturday night primetime staple You’ve Been Framed, ‘the wide-collared loon’ does so via the mouthpiece of his ‘son’, Gary, a creepy, old-fashioned ventriloquist’s dummy harking back to the music hall. This rackety doll is falling apart physically and emotionally beneath the shadow of being Hill’s anointed successor, his stand-up clunkier than even his father’s vent skills.

From the outset, in a pop culture montage reminiscent of his 2020 archive clip show Harry Hill’s World Of TV, Hill foregrounds his nonsensical instincts. Stills of warrior queen Boudica and a triumphant Benfica football team are mixed up with literal sausage factory footage, the grim, oozing grey-pink sludge of the links making for an unsettling, destabilising opening.

Declaring his envy of John Bishop, Jason Manford and Michael McIntyre, Hill maintains he wants to embrace the popular appetite for observational humour. Still, his attempt is typically bizarre, based on the principle that all manner of dishes, and indeed every person and all phenomenon, can essentially be split into two factions: tray bake or tear and share.

When he then expands this into a running call-and-response quiz with the audience, there’s fun in being part of his mob, a crowd trying to achieve consensus as to which arbitrary camp Jesus or Hitler fall into. The thinness of the conceit feels like part of the gag, however, so it most certainly doesn’t warrant being consistently returned to. You feel enthusiasm draining from the room as it slowly dawns that this quirky diversion is actually a cornerstone of the evening.

If Hill’s sideways career step into voicing Junior Bake-Off prompted his current cooking preoccupation, it’s the lockdown and his status as a 58-year-old survivor of the pandemic that gifts the show its best moments.

He sneerily baits young people in the audience with his generation’s hardiness, spitefully clinging on to their houses and children’s inheritance with malevolence. It’s hilariously, needlessly cruel, and suggests Hill could make a decent living as a pantomime villain if the opportunity ever arose.

Hill identifies a 1970s upbringing as the defining factor in this Boomer selfishness, with the decade’s lax consideration for child welfare and freedom to behave abominably. Then he revels with a puckish wickedness at the expense of his light entertainment predecessors, Operation Yewtree having since designated many of them beyond the pale.

Although Hill doesn’t make any explicit links in that regard, queue-jumper Phillip Schofield is also cheerfully mocked and features in a narrative poem of the comic fighting a squirrel to a standstill, a viscerally violent, gorily brutal epic.

Alongside a shaggy dog story of oxen sacrifice, allusions to Epstein Island, Bill Gates conspiracies and occasional cameos from a clown bearing more than a passing resemblance to Pennywise from It, there’s an altogether darker streak than we’re used to seeing from the bespectacled idiot. When he returns home to watch his daughter sleep after a show, we’re certainly not in nursery rhyme territory.

The darkness affords him an edge that he could perhaps benefit from elsewhere. Video of a baby hedgehog having its tummy tickled is delightful, but no more than that; Hill dancing to Fatboy ​Slim’s Weapon of Choice is a sight to behold, but really just makes you want to see Christopher Walken doing it properly. And Sarah The Baby Elephant, the big feature of this show that Hill’s been trailing in recent interviews, is an absolute damp squib, even after he coerces a volunteer into getting involved.

Indeed, in the silliness stakes, there’s only one big set-piece where the comedian’s imagination unequivocally triumphs over his self-indulgence, an exceptional bit of physical business that starts with him trying to get the microphone back into its stand and concludes with an audience member pulling him about on the front of the stage.

Flashes, then, of the genius that have rightly made Hill such a celebrated performer, a deliciously extended vindictive side and simply too much baffling flim-flam that fails to justify its inclusion.

• On tour until February. Harry ​ Hill tour dates

Review date: 11 Oct 2022
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Edinburgh Festival Theatre