Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

I never would have had Pat Cahill pegged for an accomplished freestyler. Even though he makes a lot of comedy songs, there’s always been something quite olde worlde about his concerns, particularly his obsession with jaunty wartime Cockney songs. So when he comes out making up rhymes on the spot about people in the audience, it’s not a surprise that he sets it to just such a  backing number, but it’s a little surprising that he’s so good at it.

His new show once again journeys to an England gone by, in spirit if not in fact. He and his live piano player Cousin Peter are St Julian’s Social Club, based out of the municipal function space of Frotton, a village in the east of England. Population depletion has left them the only two members, so off they’ve went to Edinburgh to rope in a few new recruits.

Cahill’s evocation of village life as centred on the hall is very sweet. The portrait of the Queen watching over them; the teas, coffees and finger sandwiches; the small playground just outside where his character was conceived, spent his childhood and will probably die – it’s all Present and Correct and summoned with great affection. You can almost feel the scratchy embroidery on the cushions and smell the dust warming up in the sunlight.

There’s also an undercurrent of small-town Christianity that, if anything, could have been teased out more. The club identify themselves as believers early on, and at least one of the stories relayed in the course of the show has a prominent Christian theme, but it’s not raised in a way to be made light of. Cahill himself was raised in the church and is no longer a believer. For him – and for us – its inclusion in the story is perhaps more about atmosphere than objectivity.

Conversion would be a bonus, but primarily the club are here to show us how much fun they have, and to that end there’s free singing, upside-down painting, and all sorts of other games and musical numbers, some more successful than others. When Cahill alights on a good idea, it’s damn good, and his musical intro to the list of recent village deaths is probably the hardest I’ve laughed at the Fringe this year. In other bits like the free singing section, it’s hard to see what he was going for, as getting the audience to make a random assortment of sounds never really gets funny.

So while he’s still yet to make the show that hits consistently across the course of an hour, the highs are very high indeed, and this very personal blend of songs, character comedy, absurdism and poignant longing for another time could have been made by no one else.

Review date: 19 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club