Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

There's been a terrible administrative mix-up somewhere along the line because Phil Nichol is somehow 61 years old – proud owner of a senior rail card, no less – yet still with all the Tiggerish energy of a man a third his age.

If you want to know the secret of his success, you could do a lot worse than attend this show and hope that just a speck of his supercharged positive mental attitude rubs off.

Starting with a rendition of Lou Reed's Perfect Day and a pre-recorded monologue about how we are all made of star stuff, the livewire Scottish-Canadian comedian marvels at the gazillions-to-one cosmic chances that had to accumulate to assemble countless atoms into our human forms in this room. All of us are freakishly unlikely to have existed at all, so let’s celebrate that…

A lust for life runs through every moment of this show, lauded primarily through the lives of an even older generation. As a wild, atheist performer, he may be cut from a very different cloth from his hyper-religious parents, both still alive and in their 90s, but he appreciates them and their enthusiasm.

Speaking of the older generation, he recalls, too, the insane, drug-fuelled and surprisingly raunchy first encounter with an ex’s father – it’s a tale he’s told before, but when you have an anecdote as crazy as this, it’s worth repeating.

We have but limited time on the planet, so let’s seize it with both hands, Nichol urges, inspired by the lifestyle of the cicada, which he summarises joyfully with the chanted refrain ‘you sing, you fuck, and you die’. Altogether now…

The other stimulus for this show was pianist Kevin Hearn – his former bandmate in Corky And The Juice Pigs but more famed for his work with  Barenaked Ladies – who was diagnosed with leukaemia in 1998. And what could have ended so tragically instead led to amazing, unexpected new opportunities.

Nichol hurtles breathlessly through the material, pinballing from one routine to another, mustering the crowd to join him in his revels and never stopping for too long to let any poignancy sit in the air. Would a cicada milk the moment? Hell, no.

By design, the show is chaotic, loud and relentless, but also contagiously uplifting, and I defy anyone to leave without a renewed spring in their step.

Review date: 20 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Teviot