Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

This is an interesting document about life on the sharp end of tabloid culture from Keeley Hazell, who 1990s kids will bashfully remember as one of the pre-eminent glamour models of the Nuts era. 

Exploited by her managers, persecuted by the tabloids and linked to a series of unsuitable footballers, actors and drug dealers who didn’t have her best interests at heart, this is a montage of stories from a fascinating youth – and a rare opportunity for her to tell her own story.

Hazell's narrative jumps around in a way that is sometimes quite difficult to get a handle on. It largely describes a period in her life when she returned from Hollywood to her native south-east London, providing her an opportunity to tour her ends and reminisce about her teenage years, and how everything went crazy once she started modelling. 

However, there are also at least two other framing sections, one where she’s auditioning for something while conversing with a disembodied voice, and another where she’s in the writing room for Ted Lasso. Structurally it’s cluttered, which makes it hard to draw a strong thrust from the narrative, but the anecdotes within are certainly engaging.

Most of them come from her pre-fame days as a working-class Londoner, which sound as eventful as what followed. Affectionate portraits of the working-class scoundrels and jokers in her immediate family are complemented by stories about the time she kicked a policeman in the balls, or the time she accidentally smoked crack. 

She also alludes darkly to things that happened to her that she doesn’t like to talk about – acts of violence and public humiliation brought on her by the nastiest of her exes, a dealer known to his friends and family as ‘The Cunt’.

Throughout, she comes across as charming if understandably hardened to the worst of human nature. This is one part dramatic monologue to one part comedy, so she has the freedom to let things get a little solemn, but you’re never too far from a cheerful or cynical comedic aside. 

She doesn’t need to work as hard as she does to sell the material, though, either in her performance or in the structure of her show – she's plenty compelling just telling her story.

Review date: 23 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard