There’s a lot of comics on the Fringe talking about not having any money.  And it’s true, the cost of living is affecting all of us.  Tamsyn Kelly, who first came to the Fringe as part of the Best in Class programme, is pretty upfront about the particular financial obstacles she has faced.

 

This is her comedy origin story, which takes in drama school scholarship, tap dancing classes, flirting with OnlyFans and growing up poor. The lure of the Blue Peter badge is a big motif in this show. Kelly, like a lot of us, grew up when BBC Children’s Programmes were a window into a safe comforting world, where children could grow up with big ambitions and big dreams.

 

For Kelly real life was less reassuring. Homelessness, financial instability and lack of opportunity were all part of her childhood.

 

It’s all played for laughs here. Tamsyn tells us how her dreams of owning a childhood pet landed her in a scene straight out of the television show Hoarders. She and her family spent a brief time in temporary B and B accommodation in Penzance – but for a kid, she reckons, it was a bit of a holiday.

 

Like many of us, Tamsyn first came across proper rich people when she went to college. She gets plenty of mileage from the dumb things rich young girls say to poorer ones. And she plays a clever funny trick on the audience which also allows her to show off her drama school Shakespeare.

 

Things are going better now, she says.  She has learnt how to drive, she has moved to London. She has got a boyfriend and an ADHD diagnosis.  But there’s a dark turn in the road up ahead.  Tamsyn has escaped the soulless call centre jobs and the care home cabaret circuit only to fall into one of the grim thirst traps of late-stage capitalism.

 

She has tried to come up with an upbeat ending to her story with a bit of showbiz pizazz but has accidentally created an anticlimactic ending which feels rather too bleak.  I wonder if her route to the Fringe through Best in Class (which is an excellent programme allowing working class comics to come to the Fringe as part of a mixed bill) may have made her over emphasise class in her material.

 

Lastly, at this stage in the Fringe, it’s probably not wise to throw us a cheap gag about comedy critics being ‘rats’. There are at least two of us in the audience.  Just a suggestion.

 

We’re all in this together Tamsyn.

 

 

 

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