Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

To call Chris Rutter a slow burner would be an insult to tealights. Indeed, he likens his own low-key style to a radiator because: ‘It’ll take you a long time to realise I'm actually working.’

It’s true. Sometimes his style is so subdued it’s indistinguishable from normal conversation, especially his crowd work. Nor does it help that some of the routines are quite languorous in getting to a punchline, such as revealing the unusual location of where he proposed to his fiancée, or what it was like to lose the fish finger factory in his Grimsby hometown.

But some great lines emerge from this – including a priceless one about his father being like pizza – with his sardonic style useful in downplaying the darkness of the material. That’s especially true of his Anne Frank chunk.

Such jokes aside, he’s not especially edgy, preferring to be slightly silly – with his dry delivery making his flights of fantasy come across as gospel.

In this vein, he professes a penchant for the older lady – Gladys being a girlfriend he speaks fondly about – in a conceit that’s strained to near-breaking, even though there are a few decent gags along the way. The gently surreal idea that World War Two was all about vacuum cleaners is an even harder sell, and the payoff much weaker.

Rutter – picked to be one of The Stand 5 getting mentorship from his venue this festival – prefers fiction to his own life, it seems. For example, the years he spent teaching in China are reduced to a throwaway gag about how they mispronounced his name, before moving on.

A perennial underdog, he pitches himself as performing to an audience that doesn’t relate to him and complains he’s spent three years trying to create well-crafted comedy ahead of this Fringe debut only to be overshadowed by the dumb human trick he's able to do with his wrists.

There’s not much to bind these various bits of material together into a coherent show, which fizzles out even with an ending intended to put a bit of energy in the room, from its admittedly low starting point. But there are enough gems along the way to show off Rutter’s joke-writing skills.

Review date: 17 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Stand 2