Michael Legge: Tell It Like It Is, Steve

• Brian Donaldson
• 25 August 2015

This article is from 2015.

credit: Idil Sukan

A blazingly funny hour of despair and a cautionary tale about hero worship

In a deliciously camouflaged opening, Michael Legge belts out a horrendously catchy tune about something very wrong indeed. Once the penny drops to the uninitiated that Legge is not some kind of souped-up kids entertainer and instead has one of the blackest, most bitter minds in stand-up, we can all happily strap in for the ride.

Turning the ire-filled volume up to bellow, Legge details the dreadful holiday he had in Kavos, apparently a lonesome venture to get away from it all and write his new Fringe show. Whatever was initially stirring around his head on landing in this hectic 18-30 bolthole was replaced by a lengthy, hilarious rant about young people, hotel sanitation and how he loves to spoil everyone’s fun, all the while suggesting that the awards judges would do well to get on board his misery train.

The second half merely ups the malcontentment as Legge wonders whether you should ever meet your heroes. The answer is a resounding ‘no’ with him citing several unfortunate encounters with Robyn Hitchcock, lessons he apparently never learned having already made a hole of himself at a Marillion gig as an over-excitable youngster. The chaos which Legge lays out for us feels so real that you do sometimes fear for his well-being. But if he continues to produce blazingly funny shows like this, let’s hope he never gets happy.

The Stand 2, 558 7272, until 30 Aug, 12.10pm, £8 (£7).