6th August 2007
THE JANEY GODLEY CHAT SHOW
by Colin Somerville
No frills, no
fancy stuff, just an abundance of frank and fearless conversation,
conducted with customary ribald authority by Scotland's radge renaissance
woman. To be this entertaining
in front of barely more than a dozen people off the beaten Fringe
track requires something a bit special. Yet despite being
deprived of her third guest, Robin Ince, by cross-town festival traffic,
Godley simply seizes on the extra time to wring more out of the two
who have turned up, namely Peter Buckley Hill and Paul Sinha. Who would have
thought that the Fringe veteran raconteur, comedian and comic songwriter
and the award-nominated gay Indian doctor would have made such a fascinating
chat show combination. Faced with a
less-than-capacity crowd the talk briefly turns to equally sparse
audiences, Sinha admitting to a throng of six comprising Australian
barmen and Israeli tourists, with Buckley Hill trumping that with
a solitary Radio 4 producer who turned up to see him at the Hill Street
venue in 1994. Rather than dwell on well-trodden coming out territory,
we instead discover that Sinha is a football fanatic whose allegiances
lie with Liverpool and Celtic, as Kenny Dalglish was his childhood
hero. That said, Godley's
inaugural trip down the road of gaydar.com was paved with comedy gold,
and the sudden "have you ever had a homosexual experience"
poser for Peter utterly priceless. She seized on
momentary hesitation, insisting innocently that it was a yes or no
question. In a live Fringe format the whole point is surely to escape the conventions of the television chat show, and this is how it should be done. |