Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

For reasons it’d be a spoiler to explain, Ben Pope finds himself almost ungooglable. Indeed, he has qualities that make it hard for him to stand out in the comedy circuit, too, as yet another white, thirtysomething male comedian with a well-spoken RP accent, personable manner and neatly trimmed beard.

However, what does set this former Cambridge Footlights president apart is the elegance of his joke-writing, with a consistent supply of witty lines delivered with a gentle urbane charm that allows his inventiveness to shine on its own merit.

The Cut, his first hour in six years, comes with the caution that it’s going to be ‘quite medical and surgical’ – although among the many health survival tales across the Fringe, a circumcision is a relatively minor procedure. How’s he going to get a whole show out of this?

Of course, it’s not a whole show about this. The story of the  procedure to address an uncomfortable tightness of his foreskin serves as a rack on which to hang stand-up material about the likes of his relationship, charity shops, and his parents, who are a drama teacher and librarian epitomising a certain cosily eccentric stratum of middle England.

Occasionally a routine is underpinned with messages about men’s laissez-faire attitude to health matters or the ubiquity of phallic objects in culture, but it’s very light-touch in a show that’s all about the storytelling.

There’s a little bit of many comedy genres in this well-seasoned mix: the odd pun, the occasional dick joke or other double entendre – though he’s sensibly restrained given how much latitude his subject matter would give him on this – the obligatory affecting moment to add emotional depth, and a good old-fashioned farce about smuggling a pig through a school that could have been written by  Tom Sharpe.

What shines out most are the charmingly funny vocabulary he deploys and the quirky mental pictures he conjures up that exquisitely define a microphone, for example, or a CD. That and the way the strands fit gracefully together to built a coherent show, even including the sections that are not about his circumcision, overseen by a worryingly lackadaisical Italian consultant.

The whole show has been delicately finessed, and while it lacks the raw passion of some performers, the delicacy of the writing and the endearing poise of the delivery have ‘superior Radio 4 comedy special’ written all over it. 

Review date: 1 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Assembly George Square