This free show at the fringe consists very simply of two fairly promising comedians, Mark Diamond and Darren Walsh, alternatively delivering stand up performances. The duo had no obvious stylistic similarity with each other, seemingly united only by their shared quality of being tall, and the audience thrived on the very different nature of their separate material.
Mark Diamond kicked off with the obligatory audience interaction. Perhaps improvisation is not his strong point, or perhaps the audience were simply a bit boring, because this was not the most dynamic or hilarious section. However, once Diamond settled into his own material he delighted the audience with some very sharp observational comedy on everything from graduating, to heroin to biscuits, packed with memorable wisecracks and excellent South London accent impressions.
Before the emergence of Darren Walsh the audience were warned: ‘are you ready for something wacky?’ Wacky, weird and wonderful, Walsh’s comedic style was qualitatively different from Diamond’s, in fact, quite different from any comedian I’ve seen. His comedy veered sharply into the completely absurd and very very silly. His material mainly consisted of him re-enacting the queue jumping of invisible horses in Peterborough and creating his own dance mixes, with lyrics such as ‘I want that little onion’. It was a very strange 20 minutes.
Their hour of comedy was not uproarious, but on the other hand it was free, nicely charming and indisputably original. Worth seeing if you’re passing through Cowgate.
