Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Into his early thirties, Stuart McPherson is beginning to have conversations with his partner about whether they want to start a family. A huge question, underpinning an entire Fringe show, it's complicated by his girlfriend also being in comedy, with the precariousness of their freelance life and his usual inclination to not rock the boat challenging biological imperative.

Drolly cynical, and not victim to overt sentimentality as the product of an emotionally repressed Fife upbringing, McPherson is still capable of frivolity as evidenced by the wonderfully daft, Acme-style sound and visual gags he shares. The statistical improbability of seeing Noel Edmonds four times in a single day is also recounted with childish wonder, each sighting of the near-mythical former Saturday night staple escalating in unlikelihood, vividly captured in the retelling.

Still, he's comfortable with dour implacability. And he's assembled a strong defence against his hippyish, ADHD-charged Cornish partner's entreaties. McPherson's criticism of his parents' unwillingness to share their feelings, or even important health issues, doesn't impact his love for them as he routinely expresses his sympathy for such reticence. The only time his father spoke to him about sex likely messed them both up a bit.

His relationship sounds pretty solid and candid, absorbing the time they spend apart gigging. Yet tensions over playing pool are blown out of all proportion, with McPherson displaying what passes for steeliness in his personality through adherence to the rules of the baize.

Meanwhile, the couple's dog has gone from being a divisive interloper in their sex life to the most rocksteady part of their family in training. This opening routine about the step-canine he's acquired is a shrewd, intricate dissection of the adjustments people make for domestic harmony, flipped into an increasingly elaborate, nonsensical exploration of the pooch's troubled psychology.

McPherson stresses about his influence on a child, eschewing flagrant self-hatred but open to acknowledging a pattern of mistakes in his life. More broadly, he raises the spectre of the toxic manosphere influencing a hypothetical son and marvels at the mental fragility of his younger cousin, impacted by his social media use. As a millennial, the comic is sceptical but attuned to these fears. Though as someone sucked into the Daily Mail through its puzzle page, he knows he's in no position to pass judgement.

More specifically, McPherson also damns his unborn to its future as a 'wee gimp', the inevitable, particularly Scottish rite of passage that comes and adheres to all slightly useless males north of the border. In retrospect, his unwillingness to reflect on the possibility of having a daughter feels like an oversight. But hard-earned personal experience informs his exploration of masculine succession.

Mic issues two-thirds of the way through bedevilled the early preview show I caught, seemingly unsettling McPherson and certainly checking some momentum. Which is a shame, as tackling a highly relatable topic - the arguments for breeding in a world going to shit in a handcart when your personal future also feels uncertain - he finds distinctive angles, his dry wit and propensity for seeing multiple sides of a debate giving his social observations persuasiveness.

Review date: 31 Jul 2025
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire)