Review: Jack Skipper: Skint

A charming and instantly relatable hour from the TikTok comedian

★★★★
comedy review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
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Jack Skipper
Photo by Jiksaw
Published 01 Aug 2024

The debate about whether TikTok comedians can cut it at the Fringe will go on but Jack Skipper won't be part of it. The former carpet fitter has built a sizeable following on the social media platform, having initially been thwarted in his conventional stand-up ambitions by Covid-19. But he's blessed with innately funny bones, a roguish charm and an endearing streak of gently bewildered, working-class self-deprecation that ought to play well at a guiltily bourgeois festival. Having said that, when he reiterates his “thickness”, having left school with no qualifications, it's done with a believable authenticity, affording authority to his instantly relatable observations on class, parenting and relationships.

There are echoes of Micky Flanagan in his persona of a sensitive lad with a few rough edges who's still adjusting to a middle-class milieu, attuned to its mental health struggles. But the chief distinctions he draws are generational, the differences between his parents' laissez-faire approach and the persecuting responsibility he feels towards his own kids, conspiratorially waggish that he'd rather be feckless than bothered to look after them. Formally, Skipper isn't ripping up any fittings. But he assuredly meets the demands of both arts festival and weekend club comedy, no mean feat, and seems to be laying the basis of a promising career.