When we first received this year’s Fringe program I started flicking through the pages and this show screamed out at me. Gail Porter was the Michaela Strachan or Lauren Layfield of my generation, a kid’s TV presenter that you always enjoyed watching but were a little bit too young to truly understand why.

My adolescence aside, she was always a cracking TV presenter (still is to be fair) and someone that was a welcome addition to any show that she appeared on. So, when I saw that she would be performing this show about the dramatic twists and turns that her life has taken since those early years I was quickly adding tickets to my virtual basket.

Gail took to the stage in an oversized shirt, dungarees, some incredibly colourful trainers and a very cool, yet painful looking, selection of jewellery. It was a bold look that our clown quickly softened by claiming that she just looked like a massive baby with tits!

This show was all over the place, but not in a bad way, it was the last night of The Fringe and Gail had encouraged audience interaction and boy did they interact! I am still in two minds if this was a good thing as I genuinely wanted to hear the stories but could also appreciate the back and forth between our clown and her enthusiastic crowd.

The anecdotes that made it through were both funny and tragic in equal measure, Gail is not a stand-up comedian which made the delivery of this material quite unique, our clown was humble and even uncertain at times but at no point did she lose the room. There is a charm to her delivery and a glint in her eye whenever she thinks she’s getting ‘rude’.

Tales of sectioning, break-ups, career losses and, worst of all, holidays to Spain by bus should not deliver an uplifting experience but somehow this was exactly that.  

I would like to see this show again, as I would enjoy hearing all of the anecdotes in the order intended, but how can anyone complain about being part of a gig where half the audience (and all of the venue staff) end up on stage with the performer to dance away the last show to Queen’s ‘Don’t stop me now’. 

Clown Stars * * * *

@Assembly George Square, Edinburgh