Review: Phil Ellis: Come and Take the Rest of Me

Phil Ellis | Photo by Michael Mannion

Last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Phil Ellis might swagger onstage to Eminem’s 'Lose Yourself', but he hasn’t let the acclaim go to his head. As his “hype man” MC Swags (aka comedian Tom Short) reminds us during the intro, he’s the prize’s “most recent loser”.

Wearing a George at ASDA suit that doesn’t breathe under house lights, the 42-year-old stand-up takes his audience on a breakneck tour of the life of a critically lauded comedian who’s still waiting for the TV offers to roll in. The bulk of the show sees him lamenting his modest living arrangements (the old Viz gag about using two floor tiles to save on carpeting is delightfully retooled), but this is a stuffed and varied hour, with audiovisual tomfoolery, celebrity guests and a paean to the humble milkman also in the mix. You’ll find few shows at the Fringe with a higher laugh-per-minute count.

Ellis loves poking fun at himself, but his forté is skewering his try-hard peers. He blithely recounts a family tragedy, the kind that other comedians would milk for a Netflix special, in less than three minutes (with a stopwatch on stage to prove it) and takes aim at the kind of hackneyed crowd work that regularly goes viral. Ironically, though, the biggest laugh of this performance comes from Ellis’s own slightly surreal interaction with an audience member, during which the stand-up comes to the delightful realisation that it’s impossible to be heckled by a Brummie accent.