Pappy's Fun Club

Pappy would be proud. The members of his Fun Club seem destined for bigger things. Their 2007 Edinburgh Fringe show (titled Pappy’s Fun Club) picks up hot on the heels of their 2006 offering, which garnered them a nomination as Chortle’s Best Newcomer. This year Pappy’s raise the bar even higher with their We Are Klang-like musings on the silly and ridiculous, topped off with a distinct hint of intelligence and much perverse charm.

For those as yet unacquainted with Pappy’s Fun Club, they are Matthew, Brendan, Tom and Ben, a sketch group/crew/posse/tribe – I forget the correct comedy terminology – who subvert, deconstruct and, to all intents and purposes, tear apart the conventional sketch show structure.

They chat between sketches. They don’t hide anything behind blackouts. They regularly set themselves up for, and revel in, failure. They chastise each other for poor gags. They consistently follow ideas that, in the hands of other performers, may well fall a little flat. The comic prowess and skewed thinking of this sketch team, however, ensures that they don’t. For proof of this see how the mind-crushingly boring subject of tax self evaluation is made howl-makingly, tear-inducingly funny by Tom Parry’s insane, generically ‘European’ Tax Man, who wears an eye-patch over one eye and a child’s cash register over the other.

It is tax self evaluation that forms the first of this show’s gloriously flimsy through-lines – Pappy’s Fun Club must submit their taxes or they will be forbidden to perform any more sketches. It is Pappy himself, the Club’s elderly and elusive benefactor, who provides the second – he is ill in hospital and requires the replacement of every single bodily organ. They seek donors and try to recruit an accountant (though eventually settle for the tax-calculating services of a Celtic Warrior who has been through a suitably idiotic Rocky-esque training montage).

Along the way, we witness the comeback of folk trio Marty, Mim and Julius. We are granted unexpected access to Abraham Lincoln’s diaries. We see the trailer for new movie, Things That Are Scary For Only A Short Amount of Time. And we are treated to an interminable performance by Bob Dylan’s band.

Whether the Fun Club eventually reach their tax or donor goal is ultimately irrelevant. You’ll probably have forgotten that they had any such goals in the first place (as well as forgetting where and who you are) due to laughing quite so much.

Matthew, Tom, Ben and Brendan appear such a close-knit team. This is evident in their ability to feed off each other, improvise freely, keep things fresh and find exactly the right tone to make one another corpse.

This is the absolute joy of Pappy’s Fun Club: they enjoy it, and, moreover, they want so much for you to enjoy it, too. Go see them. Soon. Before everyone else catches on to their talent and you can’t get a ticket.