Brendon Burns: Home Stretch Baby

• Brian Donaldson
• 5 August 2012

This article is from 2012.

The former comedy bad boy reflects with faded glory and bruised emotions

Like many hard-living, taste-baiting rock’n’roll comedians of the 90s and 00s, Brendon Burns is slowly coming to terms with the fact that he’s now over 40 and the law requires him to slow down. Turns out he’s pretty comfortable with that and having moved to the countryside, he can reflect on his previous metro-life.

You’d think then that he would be able to brush off some snide remarks recently left on a comedy website forum. But no, they annoyed him so much, he built a show around it. That and the fact that his dad died in January: the only upside to that traumatic event was that he wouldn’t need to ever see his ‘horrible genius’ of a stepmother again.

You have to admire the intensity that Burns can still bring to a stage, and while his passions remain convincing, the show’s theme of faded glory is almost too close to home. The story about his slightly pained experience of watching a limping AC/DC could just as easily apply to fans of Brendon Burns.

Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, until 26 Aug (not 9, 16, 23), 10pm, £12.50--£14.50 (£11--£12.50).