REVIEW: Harry Hill’s silly dream of a show delights Tivoli audience

By Scott Begbie

October 11 2022, 6:00 am

Harry Hill was a whirlwind of comedy at the Tivoli as a headliner with the Aberdeen International Comedy Festival.

“This isn’t a dream,” Harry Hill told the audience in Aberdeen’s Tivoli Theatre. “It’s happening to you right now.”

Which basically nails it when it comes to summing up an evening spent in the company of one of the nation’s most loved – and most madcap – comedians and his new Pedigree Fun show.

Harry’s headlining gig for the Aberdeen International Comedy Festival was by turns hilarious, a giddy mix of one-liners – we did indeed get on board the laughter train – and the utterly surreal. Or bonkers. Take your pick.

Harry Hill brought his Pedigree Fun show to the Tivoli in Aberdeen as part of the Aberdeen International Comedy Festival.

Let’s face it there aren’t many comedy gigs where you get a breathless recitation of Coleridge’s epic poem Kubla Khan in the middle of a rambling gag about a car accident with a squirrel, followed by a reworking of Max Wall’s comic dancing routine.

Harry Hill skillfully blended stand-up and slapstick at the Tivoli

Where one minute you’re laughing out loud in guilty pleasure – granddad dying during a game of charades shouldn’t be funny – or just looking on in bemusement at an oversize ventriloquist’s dummy throwing up.

But Harry has the skill, silliness and sheer sense of fun to blend traditional stand-up, albeit with his own twist, alongside slapstick for the modern era.

Getting something out of his shoe turned into a tug-of-war with two audience members trying to help Harry out of a never-ending sock in an extended sequence worthy of a Buster Keaton classic.

If anyone can get physical humour back in vogue, it’s Harry Hill.

Harry Hill brought his madcap humour to the Tivoli Theatre in Aberdeen with his new show, Pedigree Fun.

Suddenly everything stops for a burst of silly song and dance from Harry

Not everything lands – even Harry joked his efforts to get his mic back on the mic stand was going on too long.

And sometimes the set-ups are simply puzzling at first – why are we all shouting out “tray bake” or “tear and share” at pictures on a screen. But that was a slow build into a central and very funny plank of the evening to help introduce us to a new way of defining the world.

Liz Truss is definitely a tray bake.

Then suddenly Harry’s away on a tangent about Debenhams, the easy road to fascism – they’re connected you know – or why it’s so important not to get a recipe box for oxtail in a cream sauce with noodles.

Harry Hill took the Tivoli audience on a rollercoaster ride of surreal and very funny humour.

Suddenly everything stops for a burst of silly song and dance, then we’re back in the room about how We Buy Any Car don’t.

Biggest laughs when Harry Hill riffed on being a child of the 1970s

The biggest laughs came when Harry riffed on being a child of the 70s – the good old days of real diseases and swings designed as death traps for children. Hands up if you’re part of the generation that burned the world’s future for a laugh.

Of course, most of us know Harry through the lens of a TV camera from classics like his TV Burp and You’ve Been Framed.

So it was a joy to see him interacting with a live audience – from spraying the front rows with a wine box to getting someone on stage to help him wrangle Sarah, the baby elephant, a comic creation that verges on genius.