Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Being petty is a great premise, but the most notable thing about Vix Leyton’s affable but slight show is what opportunities have been missed. 

The cheerful Welsh comedian presents a run-through of things she considers petty, largely ripped from the headlines, national and local. She then places each example on a graph of effort expended versus results achieved.

And, erm, that’s it, really. Each story, some more interesting than others,  requires quite a lot of exposition and builds less towards jokes than a chuckle at how foolhardy all the participants were. 

Take, say, the Wagatha Christie clash between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney. Leyton retells how Rooney caught out her fellow Wag for leaking private information from her Instagram account, the vast legal expenses run up during the ensuing legal battle and the incredulity greeting the news that Vardy's agent ‘accidentally’ dropped her phone into the North Sea. We can chuckle at the folly of it all, but where are the gags? Also, most people still surely remember the main points of this story, so she’s telling us what we already know.

Taking in the likes of hip-hop vendettas, the Colin the Caterpillar copyright lawsuit and the Fleetwood Mac feud, the show can read a little more like a ‘ten stupid arguments’ article on Buzzfeed. 

Not even all her cases seem to be petty. Why wouldn’t M&S want to try to protect its cake designs? And the woman who repeatedly went public with complaints that  Virgin had wrongly charged her for porn films that her husband almost certainly watched is surely just an act of supreme naivety, rather than pettiness. And that is the example she opens with. Or is it petty of me to point out that’s probably not petty?

Yet the stories are jolly enough, and Leyton is a warm and eloquent host, even if reading much of the material from a folder seems like poor form. All this ensures you’ll have a nice time. 

But as she seems driven more by conveying information in an entertaining way than writing pithy jokes, it would be beneficial to talk about things people don’t already know, to lend the format a QI-style fascination. Brief and interesting sections about the origins of the Yankee Doodle Dandy song and how Lesley Gore followed up her hit It’s My Party And I’ll Cry If I Want To suggest how that could go.

Or perhaps she could delve into examples closer to home. Does she indulge in petty behaviour? Have audience members? Or maybe she could look into why people get involved in such pettiness at huge personal cost in the first place? Ideally, combine all the above with historical and contemporary stories to create a show with more dimensions, rather than simply one modestly amusing story after another.

Review date: 11 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Laughing Horse @ West Nic Records