This one-night show deserved six stars. Julian Clary and Christopher Biggins’ ‘Fringe at Prestonfield’ onstage interview was the perfect feel-good hour: two gentlemen being unapologetically camp, smutty, and uproariously funny while discussing their lives. That’s exactly what the Fringe should be.
Julian Clary, the infamous television comedian from the 1980s, needs little introduction. A self-described ‘renowned homosexual’, he is an unapologetic and glorious one at that. His comedy is crass, candid, outrageous, and extremely heartwarming. What’s more, I’d not seen any of his acts before this interview: he conveyed all that over the course of sixty minutes. TV star Christopher Biggins greeted Clary with a “darling!” and a kiss, before interviewing him about his life, comedy work, dogs, Dame Joan Collins, and much more.
Possibly the best part of this gorgeously over-the-top interview was the camaraderie between Clary and Biggins. Clary charmingly revealed early on that he was “so left-wing it frightens me,” at which point he asked Biggins, “you’re not left-wing, are you?” “No I’m not!” replied Biggins amicably.
And yet the two men got on like best pals, with Biggins guffawing (he had a fabulous, thundering guffaw) at most of what Clary said. It was a triumph for human connection over politics: wild laughter should (and did, this evening) always transcend political differences. When Clary mentioned Dame Joan Collins, he even motioned to Biggins and said with a shudder, “you’re both so right-wing!” Once again, laughs rose from Biggins and the audience; proceedings continued with no awkwardness.
What’s even more in this spirit is how Joan Collins, despite her political differences with Clary, played a significant (and unwitting) role in his rise to fame. He originally became a famous name by dubbing himself the “Joan Collins Fan Club”: a fanboy show to celebrate Collins’s status as a 1980s icon. The act was popular – until her lawyers sent him a “Cease and Desist”. This was made doubly awkward when both Collins and Clary were coincidentally cast in the same production many years later. Since then, they have rather charmingly remained great friends.
Clary spoke about many weird and wonderful aspects of his life, including his belief about dogs that “the right dog is sent to you at the right time”, an infamous Edinburgh one-night stand where the club doorman he brought back to his hotel room ended up wetting the bed, and his current residence at Noel Coward’s house (not “an old council house”, as a journalist once misheard). Biggins ended the interview by asking him to sing a song, at which point Clary stood up and performed “Sometimes, Life’s a Cunt” – a song about carrying on with life, regardless of what it throws at you. “Even in a perfect world, a little rain will fall,” says the opening line, so we may as well continue without letting rage consume us. One verse told the story of a woman barging past you in a shopping queue, and advised that we shouldn’t blow up with anger. Instead, just tap her on the shoulder and say, “you’re like life: you’re a…” (and so on).
Above all, Clary came across as a genuinely humane, sweet, good man: one of outrageous – but never malicious – humour. Christopher Biggins, likewise, was impossible not to like. Three cheers for these fabulous men: it was far from Clary’s first Fringe, and surely won’t be his last.
Image via Madison Lambert, with permission for The Student to use for press material.