A surprise run at the Assembly Rooms this August is a chance for Davidson to fall in with more progressive comedy trends. But will he take it?
It sometimes seems as though anyone can be rehabilitated, any old entertainment dinosaur restored to fashion (ironically or otherwise), as long as he or she hangs around long enough. But there are exceptions, and I always assumed Jim Davidson was one of them. "We think we know Jim Davidson," wrote Sarfraz Manzoor in 2011, describing him as "the south London, Page 3 girl-dating, Thatcher-loving, Our Boys-supporting, gay-baiting, hard-drinking, racist standup comedian". Surely Davidson, the brains behind "Chalky White", was too far beyond the pale to be embraced, ever, by anyone with taste, standards or affection for the artform of comedy?
Well, that theory will be tested this summer, it transpires, now that Davidson's Edinburgh Fringe debut has been announced. The ex-Generation Game man is performing for the duration of the festival not in some marginal location or end-of-the-pier playhouse, but under the auspices of the Assembly Rooms, one of the traditional "big four" Fringe venues. The show, No Further Action, promises to tell the true story of the worst year of Jim's life, featuring "his arrest [in connection with Operation Yewtree] and the nightmare 12 months that followed, the clearing of his name and winning the heart of the nation all over again [it says here] as a Big Brother champion".
Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.
It sometimes seems as though anyone can be rehabilitated, any old entertainment dinosaur restored to fashion (ironically or otherwise), as long as he or she hangs around long enough. But there are exceptions, and I always assumed Jim Davidson was one of them. "We think we know Jim Davidson," wrote Sarfraz Manzoor in 2011, describing him as "the south London, Page 3 girl-dating, Thatcher-loving, Our Boys-supporting, gay-baiting, hard-drinking, racist standup comedian". Surely Davidson, the brains behind "Chalky White", was too far beyond the pale to be embraced, ever, by anyone with taste, standards or affection for the artform of comedy?
Well, that theory will be tested this summer, it transpires, now that Davidson's Edinburgh Fringe debut has been announced. The ex-Generation Game man is performing for the duration of the festival not in some marginal location or end-of-the-pier playhouse, but under the auspices of the Assembly Rooms, one of the traditional "big four" Fringe venues. The show, No Further Action, promises to tell the true story of the worst year of Jim's life, featuring "his arrest [in connection with Operation Yewtree] and the nightmare 12 months that followed, the clearing of his name and winning the heart of the nation all over again [it says here] as a Big Brother champion".
Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.