There are some shows where you have to wonder ‘what is this person doing here, and more importantly why?’ Simon Lilley and Asli Akby have entered this show in the Fringe, paying the entry fee and printing flyers and stumping up for the associated costs – and for what reason? I really couldn’t tell you.
'Who here is a big Morrissey fan?' Lilley asked and was met with a resounding silence. The inspiration for the title ‘Nice People Have Ruined My Life’ comes from a Morrissey song. It is possible Lilley has a whole lot of solid gold Morrissey material that he decided not to use on a room full of people who did not or would not profess ardent fandom, but as the case was instead we were treated to just under an hour of disconnected ramblings. After dissecting the names and hometowns of literally the entire audience, Lilley moved on to some jokes about the Olympics, Poundland, and Poor Old Michael Finnegan. But were they really jokes? It is hard to say that they were. Each time he would build toward something, but just as it felt like we were getting somewhere the story would slip through his fingers; the narratives dissolved without middles or ends and there were no punch lines. It felt like hard work.
Not entirely his fault, of course. The show was supposed to be a two hander, with the second half provided by Akby. Unfortunately she had eaten something disagreeable and so declined to come up on stage, instead sitting in the audience and playing with her phone. Lilley was desperate for her to join him and called for her to come on up several times, but she left him hanging. This was not very nice but it could have been absolutely fine if they had either called the evening off or cut it short after half an hour, rather than wallowing through more minutes than they had material to fill. It is a free show so nobody would have felt short-changed.
Sadly, they were not prepared to make these kind of bold sensible choices.This wasn’t stand-up to loathe but there was really nothing there to like. At its best it was a nice conversation but it was never actually comedy.
