Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Phil Ellis has a strong contender for best opening gag of the Fringe, pulling off a ridiculous deceit that’s fooling no one. Knowing the comic’s back catalogue helps it lands harder, and it’s clear most of the Monkey Barrel crowd are well on board.

When the show proper starts, Ellis pledges a highbrow hour, with none of the audience plants that have come to define his rambunctious work. Two reasons: one because he’s touring next year on the back of his forthcoming Taskmaster appearance – an excellent booking, incidentally – and can’t afford to pay extras. And two, to finally get a good review from the snooty Guardian by adding a bit of culture.

Indeed, title Soppy Stern comes from Philip Larkin’s best-known poem, This Be The Verse, to describe a parenting style that’s half sentimental, half strict. And over the course of the hour, the comic introduces us to his mum, dad and other family members who embody that approach.  

This doesn’t really play to his strengths as a perennial japester, who usually only lets reality slip into his set an aside, revealing the grim underside of choosing a life on stage as a tragicomic punchline. Do we need the full familial backstory?

It’s not a word you often associate with a Phil Ellis performance, but the show can lull in these moments as he takes us back to his Preston upbringing. Never for too, too long, mind, as some nonsense is always around the corner. There’s a specially strong running gag about him calling out inappropriate language when he hears it.

He speaks about having one foot in the clubs and one in Fringe shows, which he feels might be detrimentally dividing his career. In fact, it’s a huge strength being able to play to both crowds – keeping his club work interesting and his festival shows focussed on gags.

And whatever intentions he may assert towards being taken seriously as a comic, Ellis has always acted the fool, as his ill-executed schoolboy Top Cat prank that he relays here attests. It ended, like so many of the comic's stories, in public humiliation.

However, because he prefers larking to Larkin, Ellis’s many digressions ended up with him seriously overrunning, visibly editing out sections as he hurtled towards the end, while filleting others so much they seemed cursory. 

This and the family stories that are more sincere than silly means Soppy Stern doesn’t feel like a vintage Ellis show. But him at half power is still more entertaining than many comics at full pelt.

Review date: 16 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club