Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Alison Spittle / Christopher Macarthur-Boyd

Alison Spittle, Monkey Barrel ★★★

Alison Spittle is fat, she tells us at the top of the show. But not as fat as she used to be. And that’s the premise of BIG, in which she describes why she has been overweight since she was eight years old and what led to the recent weight loss – “about an XL Bully’s-worth”.

The Irish comic talks about the sexual abuse which prompted her weight gain as a child, but this is no misery memoir, as she goes on to talk about body positivity (cue some smart Lizzo and Adele gags), and even the “fat bitch” that punctuates so many everyday exchanges with men she turns into big laugh.

A period of illness necessitating a hospital stay – Spittle knew she was really poorly because she couldn’t be bothered to post on social media, she tells us drily – was the starting point for the weight loss. She talks about septicaemia and a medical procedure unbeknown to me previously; I suspect most of her audience might also prefer to remain unenlightened, but she mines some decent comedy from it.

There are a few more anecdotes as she talks about ADHD among comics, a disappointing trip to a theme park and her appearance on Celebrity Pointless before the show rather runs out of steam, but there are some big laughs along the way.

• Until 24 August

Christopher Macarthur-Boyd, Monkey Barrel ★★★

Christopher Macarthur-Boyd wants to start with his trauma: he recently visited Surrey and saw a man wearing a jumper tied around his shoulders. “I’m from the East End of Glasgow!” he cries.

It’s a great start to Howling at the Moon, an entertaining observational hour in which he talks about this and that; his family, his dating life (Australian women have a thing for “speccy wee guys” like him, he attests), and scary Glaswegian taxi drivers.

There’s a strong section on how everybody believes that the music of their youth – he’s particularly irritated by Oasis fans in this regard – is better than any other era’s, this country’s fondness for David Attenborough and, as a public health warning, why you should never drink from a can…

It feels like a disjointed narrative (not helped by the comic forgetting one section and being distracted by an overly refreshed member of the audience on the night I saw the show) but he brings the disparate elements together with the show’s unexpected finale, in which Macarthur-Boyd delivers some big punchlines as he discusses the fluidity of sexual attraction.

• Until 24 August
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