This is how it begins. Matt Forde walks on stage at the Pleasance supported by a walking stick and explains why. Cancer at the base of his spine. Diagnosed just after last year’s Fringe. He has had major surgery since he was here 12 months ago. The fact that he’s in Edinburgh at all this year is quite something.
Such is the set-up. Forde somehow manages to play it for laughs. While never playing it down.
But while it feels like a necessary acknowledgement, it’s also one that doesn’t distract him from the real reason his audience is here. We are, after all, just over a month into a new Westminster Government and for a political comedian there is plenty to be getting on with.
So, what follows is an hour lambasting Rishi Sunak and the outgoing Tories, some Labour cheerleading (Forde is, after all, a former Labour advisor who watched England play Serbia at the Euros in the company of the future PM and deputy PM) and a quick pop at the SNP just to show he knows what’s going on north of the border, before attention turns to the other side of the Atlantic and the horror of another potential Trump presidency.
This is, let’s face it, comedy for centrist mums and dads. A Guardian op-ed column with added jokes (probably more John Crace than Owen Jones to be fair).
Still, even if you scoff at some of the underlying assumptions, you will probably still laugh, because Forde’s impersonations of our political leaders are the work of close attention. He is good on voice and, crucially, mannerisms. He does a good John Swinney for the home audience and he has already got the new Prime Minister down pat.
And yes, he has a little fun here with Starmer and Angela Rayner. But there’s no real venom involved. That’s reserved for the likes of Reform’s Lee Anderson (who he imagines convincingly as a school bully) and Farage. And like everyone else at the Fringe this year, it seems, he obviously does Trump. But his Trump is very good (the impersonation, not the man), vacillating between stupidity, self-regard and poison.
And despite everything, there is an optimism on display here. Perhaps that’s to be expected in the circumstances. That Forde is onstage at all is something to applaud.
And as the show’s framing reminds us, the personal is political. Forde is here this year, as he admits, by the grace of the NHS. Despite appearances to the contrary, not everything is failing in this country. Forde is walking proof.
Matt Forde: The End of an Era Tour, 20.00, Pleasance Courtyard (Beyond), until August 25
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/matt-forde-the-end-of-an-era-tour
Teddy Jamieson
