Hoots @ Potterrow – Big Yurt
Aug 7-11, 13-18, 20-25
21:00
Five years ago I went to see a fledgling comedian riffing on his youthful escapades in Japan. His name was Ollie Horn, & I liked him, awarding 4s across the board. I was also left wondering if, with maturity, he’d be able to cross the sacred line into the 5s, & five Fringes later, I went to find out…
Wow! Euphorically wow! With fake orange tan half covering his face, torso cover’d by a shirt fasten’d only by a single button, & constantly puffing his vape, Ollie set off the kind of slick-ass character comedy you never knew existed, but now certainly does so – among, if not even, the best I’ve ever seen.
“I’ve an hour with these people, I don’t know if I can deal with a boner…”
Urging we watchers not to act like a 2-4-1 crowd, the principle theme of his hilarious regalings is the quest for a trophy wife, around which theme there is only about 20 minutes of actual material, the rest is just surfing the scintillant connection he creates with his adoring audience. If ever a section of us weren’t quite tuned into his jocular frequency – moments of extreme rarity, btw – he’d engage with one among them & bring the section back onto the surfboard, generally hitting on a girl with borderline inappropriateness, but all of whom would softly capitulate & become an eagerly consenting & vital part of this incredible show.
So, why was ‘Comedy for Toxic People (and Their Friends)‘ so brilliant? To start with, he’s got this kind of dance-floor hand shuffle, a hooky & hypnotizing leitmotif which ended & began each section, leaving us fizzing with sedatives. I also admir’d his ability to react to any moment of audience randomness with an injection of super-sharp comedy. As for the less spontaneous stuff, his jokes were pristinely funny, interpepper’d with extremely clever & subtle refrains, on the ‘getting’ of which you just burst out in laughter beside a master at his work.
“It don’t matter if you’re thick, cos you’re hot…”
I swear down, he managed to eke out of me the full repertoire of my laughs – chortles, giggles, snorts & guffaws -, & the tears were genuinely bubblin’ up in my eyes. That’s some pretty esoteric vibes, like, & I felt rather like a courtier in the presence of Elizabeth I, in stitches while witnessing Richard Tarleton at his peak. The English have a genius for this kind of thing – control’d & yet uncontrollable hysterics.
What a transformation Ollie has undertaken over the past five years, a complete shedding of the skin from baby bambi to gallant stag, whose long antlers represent the tools he’s been finding & storing in his comedy locker. I urge anyone at the Fringe this year to visit the yurt-shrine & experience Ollie’s pre-eminent feast of fun, his banquet of banter, his megameal of mirth; the salutary comedians will learn from him, & the audience will fall in love with him, among which lobbying masses might well just be the trophy wife he’s clearly destined to find.
Damo
