Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

PowerPoint comedian Ted Hill is riding both high and low after his appearance on Britain’s Got Talent this year, where he won something called a golden buzzer but was beaten in the final by a dog. Like Viggo Venn before him, he’s spent every gig since then trying to fend off the advances of his BGT fans and re-establish whatever weirdo credentials he felt he had before he exposed himself to the masses.

To that end, each audience member is given a sign to hold up with TOO WEIRD on one side and NOT WEIRD ENOUGH on the other, and we’re invited at intervals to share our feedback with Hill who (I’m guessing) does not adjust the show at all in response.  Given that it’s a pretty on-rails PowerPoint-based experienced with hundreds of complex cues, I imagine it’s not easy to change tack halfway through. When he occasionally does crowdwork or solicits input, the joke is usually that he immediately forces the conversation back onto his special interests.

In this hour, that’s often the humble water vole and the invading species that is out-competing it: the American mink. He enjoys drawing comparisons between his own behaviour as a person with autism, and the behaviour of the water vole, which he believes is autistically-coded. An audience member is given an arcade light gun with which to shoot minks whenever they appear on the PowerPoint.

The show is stuffed with silly and creative moments like this that push it beyond the boundaries of normal PowerPoint material: there’s a rigged game of GeoGuessr hosted by a prancing jester, a cameo from Mark Silcox, a lexigram that he uses to do crowdwork, not to mention the dozens of pre-programmed video stings that he can throw into the mix at any time via his complex mixing desk.

The manic, slightly aggressive energy with which he pushes through the show feels like it doesn’t hit quite the right note for how fun the material is. Hill’s main peer in this realm is Mat Ewins, who has stronger, weirder ideas and a stressed-out stage persona that harmonises a little better with the mad tech gubbins flying around. 

There’s definitely room for both of them in this town though, and PowerPoindexter works way more often than it doesn’t.

Review date: 29 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Assembly George Square