Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Ed Gaughan - the voice of Baron Silas von Greenback in the rebooted Danger Mouse – is good at accents. That’s about the best thing to say about this sloppily conceived, undercooked and tediously paced show.

Surrounded by BBC Devon branding, he sets out the premise that this is a local radio spin-off of Who Do You Think You Are? – a premise often ditched for whatever he wants to do, such as sharing an anecdote about a terrible rural gig when he was outshone by an incompetent magician called The Mysterious Steven. 

We then meet some of Gaughan’s alleged brothers – possibly part of the WDYTYA strand, but it’s not very clear - all from different parts of the UK, obviously, as he has to show off those vocal talents.

There’s the man who grew up in the North East and became a DJ at 51 after his wife left him or the West Midlands-based writer of confusing vampire films. The characters are well-executed but empty, there’s no feeling that they’re any more than fleeting ideas made flesh. We vote whether each is ‘not my kind of guy’ or ‘a really good guy’ . God knows why. And the phrases change midway through, purely out of inattention to detail.

The convoluted genealogical device leads him to discover his biological father is Napoleon Bonaparte – it isn’t really worth explaining the long-winded and uninteresting  IVF-based shaggy dog story he took to get to this idea. Sorry, not Napoleon Bonaparte, but ‘Scrapoleon Zoneapart’ as Gaughan thinks it’s funny to call him.

Enter TV historian Lucy Worsley – who is amusingly portrayed in a cheap and odd hairpiece, Vic and Bob-style – to explain, entirely earnestly, how Napoleon invented nationalism and the idea of a strongman leader as a master of manipulating the truth, albeit one with a fragile ego. Like Trump, do you see? Or Farage. Very clever. 

Gaughan then makes the parallel with another toxic male, Jean Claude Van Damme, and plays a 15-year-old clip of him having a meltdown in front of his wife after being rejected for a movie role – which runs for a full three minutes. A later shot-by-shot remake features Gaughan as Napoleon, getting no laughs beyond the original wry smile at the conceit. Still, that’s 10 per cent of the show committed to this.

As a musician, Gaughan also discussed the theory of the cycle of fifths, contained in the Eroica Symphony that Beethoven originally intended to dedicate to Napoleon before wising up to his despotism, but he completely lost my non-musical brain here on both the premise and the point he was trying to make about how that reflects the ups and downs of life.

We get some Craig David gags (in 2026, how retro!) and another brother who’s also, confusingly, the brother of Frankenstein’s monster, with more limp, muddled  jokes before Gaughan reaches his conclusion: ‘Stop giving power to damaged men.’ If that doesn’t stop the rise of fascism, I don’t know what will.

It seems obvious to say it, but this Emperor has no clothes.

Review date: 19 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Just The Tonic at The Caves