Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

We’ve seen a comic genius in a papier-mâché head before, of course. But only Sam Eley could look at Frank Sidebottom and think: I could make that weirder.

The freakishly large, chubby-cheeked head of his alter ego, Basil Crumbwick, includes terrifying bloodshot eyes and male-pattern baldness recreated from carpet offcuts. But the most grotesque thing about him isn’t his appearance, but his views.

He’s a Reform-voting cranky old white man, lashing out because he’s lonely and confused by a changing world and all those who have wronged him. He has no truck with such new-fangled inventions as mental health or women with agency. His safe space – as revealed in the unlikely self-help book he’s written - is to imagine himself in the unreconstructed male paradise of the Playboy mansion.

This is an easy archetype to mock – and there’s plenty of satire about his appalling reactionary opinions and his bristles against wokeness  – but Eley layers so much into this character via an absolutely phenomenal rate of brilliantly eccentric and original jokes. 

He’s a firehose of uniquely offbeat ideas, each distilled into the perfectly phrased one-liner laden with glorious mental images but not a wasted syllable. They are imbued with his character in the precise choice of language, inventive in the gaps they leave for the audience to complete.

Yet all the madness makes some kind of twisted sense. The joke about humans discovering sex is especially priceless, but there are scores of sucker-punch lines. Do not take a beer into this show, as you’ll only end up snorting it out of your nose as yet another wildcard punchline delivers its sucker punch.

Overall, Basil comes with a strong flavour of Vic Reeves’s brand of surrealism, with a generous dash of The League Of Gentleman, and all seasoned with Alan Partridge’s tragicomic lack of self-awareness, but this is entirely of Eley’s own inspired invention. 

There’s joy, too, as details of Basil’s pathetic life are slowly revealed over the hour, from the irrational hatred of his upstairs neighbour, Beverley, to trying to make friends with his binman, the gradual piecing together of this character is rewarding.

We hear from the man under the mask too, mainly to complain about its discomfort - as if he never considered the consequences of wearing a weighty, claustrophobic headgear in a Fringe sweatbox. 

Every drop of sweat is worth it. This exquisitely written, adeptly performed show is a monumental triumph.

Review date: 12 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club