Tim Fitzhigham: Gentleman Adventurer
Live Review

Could adventuring ever start to pail in excitement? The extreme, death-defying lengths Sir Tim FitzHigham has gone to in the course of creating memorable comedy shows make far more celebrated caper comedians like Dave Gorman and Alex Horne appear well-balanced. Sane even.

Championed by Clint Eastwood no less, who crowbarred a gratuitous cameo for FitzHigham and his tale of rowing the English Channel in a bathtub into his forthcoming movie, the maverick aristocrat has also found endorsement in the form of a commemorative beer, been made a commodore by the British Navy and most importantly of all, been granted licence to indulge his madcap escapades by his new wife.

Yet upon finding himself trimming a candlewick, FitzHigham wonders if he’s finally succumbing to what he can barely bring himself to acknowledge: middle-class, bourgeois respectability. Will the man whose dynasty tried to steal the crown of England, repeatedly, and with such persistent lack of success that it makes them look like a template for Blackadder, settle down and allow his ‘hero gene’ to die out?

Such is FitzHigham’s lengthy career of outlandish quests-turned-comedy shows – rowing the Thames in a paper boat; Morris dancing from London to Norwich; running 40 miles across Spain in medieval armour – that newcomers have to be carefully inducted into his world.

This he approaches by bellowing them onboard from the top deck of his ‘pirate ship’, the Pleasance’s new venue The Ark. A leaky wooden vessel that’s perfectly in keeping with his eccentricity, director Paul Byrne even chases a ‘stowaway’ child out midway through the hour. Designed to run on environmentally-friendly means, the boat is persistently malfunctioning, so we must rely on FitzHigham’s high-wattage, wild-eyed raconteurship to power the gig instead.

With warm-up material quite unlike any you’ll hear elsewhere on the Fringe – his position as the 14th Pittancer of Selby in the Ridings and how he came to have his own flag – FitzHigham takes his entertaining time getting to the nub of his show, the potential end of his proud adventuring name. Naturally, there’s still time for him to relate two near-death experiences. One partaken with Andrew Maxwell in the Alps is underdeveloped, but the other, about how his mother’s advice almost did for him in an exploding toilet in the West Indies, is delightfully told.

Amid nostalgia for challenges overcome, FitzHigham consoles himself with his baby daughter, finding himself alternately proud and surpassed by the child’s gung-ho spirit, a warm, endearing conclusion to the show.

Although by his restless standards, this feels like one of those sitcom ‘best of’ episodes, cobbled together from old triumphs, FitzHigham undoubtedly deserves the break, domestic happiness and a chance to recharge his batteries. With threads of ripping yarns flapping throughout, I look forward to the inevitable Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade-style memoirs of father and offspring hurling themselves into further scrapes.