Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Stephen Catling has a full suite of conditions and disorders which means his brain doesn’t work like most people’s. You don’t need to be a medical professional to diagnose that, just an audience member in his chaotically surreal show.

Fans of Harry Hill will appreciate the quickfire absurdity of the hour,  cascading with draft jokes, preposterous props and manic sound effects. 

I say quickfire: Catling makes a purposefully glacial entrance to the front of the room while wearing a giant slug’s head. It turns out this – and the show’s title Moving On… Really Really Slowly – is reference to the speed at which he’s getting his life back together after two devastating breakups, one especially badly timed. This bonkers hour is perhaps part of the healing process.

So enjoy some gastropod-based punnery, the sorts of jokes where horses walk into pubs, and sketch ideas along the lines of ‘what if I had owls for hands?’ When an especially corny gag lands, Catling high-fives the entire front row as the Benny Hill theme plays, it’s that sort of show.

Some of the skits are a bit of a stretch – I certainly got left behind in the riff about his vendetta against swans –  but even if you don’t get fully on board, you can still laugh at their utter oddness.

Eventually autobiographical details filter through, but even the truth sometimes feels like a set-up, from him having sex with a Satanic witch to getting hooked on videos of people trimming cows’ hooves. The bizarre YouTube black holes he finds himself falling into in his post-split funk may well have influenced the form of this show, buffeting the audience from one peculiar topic to the next.

His romantic woes add a rare emotional dimension to all the silliness, even if there’s no clear resolution as his autistic brain is still processing it all. But he has still got a sex toy for company, pimped up here in the most ridiculous way. 

For if there’s one thing guaranteed in Catling’s work, it’s that you’ll see things that you definitely won’t experience anywhere else in comedy. 

Review date: 5 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Laughing Horse @ The Free Sisters