Emo Philips @ The Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh
August 29th 1993 09:00 pm
As the years have progressed, I find myself enjoying the storytelling variety of comedian more than the joke teller. I prefer Daniel Kitson or Reginald D. Hunter to Jimmy Carr or Peter Kay for example. (Ok, bad example, as I really fucking hate Jimmy Carr and Peter Kay, but you get my drift). But I still have a fondness for the comedy of Emo Philips. He’s a little bit surreal, a little bit crazy, and while not always laugh out loud funny, there’s a joke in pretty much every line.
This was my first visit to the Edinburgh festival, and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. What Denis M and I encountered was a bit chaotic, but pretty entertaining as well. As is standard at the festival, Emo played for an hour, although we saw him outside the venue too, as he walked in past the queue of people waiting to see him.
The only gag I remember from this show was when he asked a young boy in the front row to join him on stage for a bit. The kid was a bit reluctant to go, but was persuaded when he was told, “Go on… it’s ok… I’m not Michael Jackson.” (That joke was current in 1993).
Here’s a clip of Emo from a couple of years earlier…
