One complaint reserved by many locals is that the Festival attracts a lot of sorts born with silver spoons in their mouths, or, as Joe Bor’s climber creation puts it, the sort whose ‘uncle is Lord Salisbury’ and who spends endless hours ‘going out on the lash’. Rare is it that a show will characterise these posh toffs with such gusto as Bor puts into the snobbish Jasper Cromwell Jones.
A character straight out of the Bear Grylls/Ben Shepherd finishing school, Jasper launches into a 50 minute monologue of his mountain expedition with best friend ‘Fishy’ (naturally Jasper’s lad friends have a ridiculous nickname such as Dodger or Julia) with the show performed in the guise of an Alan Partridge-style ‘book launch’. There are photos and video diaries aplenty to illustrate Jasper’s trek, which he naturally hypes up to show how important it is that he be recognised – ‘the mountains made me feel so insignificant – and yet so significant.’
Jasper’s diatribe convincingly paints a picture of the protagonist as a Tim Nice But Dim-like character. It is entirely one-dimensional – the material is limited to jokes underlining Jasper as either posh or a bit lacking in intellect – but in what it sets out to achieve, it is very successful.
Bor does lose the audience on occasion – one scene involving tasting sessions of ‘mountain food’ degenerates slightly into a student drinking game scenario, while some jokes fall flat off the face of the mountain. But the young posh professional sort who all outside the Clapham area of South London love to loathe is well portrayed, right down to Jasper’s self-proclaimed ‘legend’ status. You may hate him as a character, but his show is very likeable.
