Edinburgh Favorites: Owen Niblock's Twisted Whimsy

Owen with his wee stringed thing...

Geeks of Edinburgh fringe unite.

I'm slowly completing my 'fringe favorites' section where I give a wee mention to my favorite acts of the fringe. As I could only afford the free shows there may note be huge names (apart from the few cool dudes who did some great free shows despite being 'so hot right now' in the world of comedy.

One of my favorite one-man shows was Owen Niblock's great Twisted Whimsy which was at the White Horse, one of my favorite Edinburgh venues, a totally old school boozer with a stereotypically dower landlord, called "Rab", he was rake thin with a moustache a tie-shirt-jumper combo and a neat line in 'banter'. Basically this was telling every English person they were 'poofs' and saying things like 'cheer up for fuck sake, you're on your holidays' to a dour-faced American who ordered three gin and tonics. I escaped most of this because I was Irish but did once ask for a half pint which didn't go down too well.

The day I saw Owen there was a front row of 14-year-olds with their adoring parents in the back row, he handled it brillantly when doing his darker stuff red-faced saying 'I'm so going to hell', my favorite joke was 'I'm a computer programmer, it's in my blood, I'm type o1o1oo11o' a great combination of geekiness and prescision. His 30 jokes in G-minor is an amazing set with added musical effects. A really good show with a great balance of fun, geekiness and darkness.

What I enjoyed was when talking to Owen and he quitely says things like "I think next year I'll build a robot to do all the flyering" you genuinely don't know if this is a actual possibility, because with him it could definitely happen and all the comics would rent/buy one and put a rubber likeness of their face on it....

Here's the man in action in 2007: