Adam Hills: Go You Big Red Fire Engine

Note: This review is from 2001

Review by Steve Bennett

This is just so much pure, unadulterated fun - an exhilarating celebration of the simple pleasures in life.

The fantastically positive attitude encompassed by the title, originally shouted by an audience member and gradually becoming a rallying cry for good times everywhere if Hills has anything to do with it, proves surprisingly infectious - thanks in no small part to the gleeful enthusiasm of the performance.

Hills has an unrivalled joie de vivre, a genuine desire to get people involved and make them happy. When he singles out an audience member, they're always going to have a great time - being chosen for fun, not ridicule.

Like an overactive child, he always wants to come out to play. And like the typical Australian he describes in his set, everything's ripe for a prank - even a couple of punters sneaking off to the toilet - but never at anyone's expense.

But it's not all messing about, there's good solid material here, too, which is mostly as fresh as his attitude. Even when he does tread where others have been - Jerry Springer, and crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, for example, he does so with such panache that familiarily breeds only contentment.

Yet this is ultimately not about observations or gags, but comedy as a state of mind.

I defy even the most jaded of festival-goers not to come out of this fabulously joyful show with a spring in their step and a song in their heart. Even if that song does contain the chorus "No way. Get fucked. Fuck off."

And at £9 an hour, that's remarkably cheap therapy.

Review date: 1 Jan 2001
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

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