Steve Hall: Vice-Captain Loser

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Poor Steve Hall. For a start, this show takes its title from a nickname given to him as a child by his own father, “because I wasn’t even the biggest loser around, only the second biggest.” What is more, he has to perform said show in the Pleasance Hut, a tiny sweatbox of a venue that could be referred to as a glorified Portakabin if it had been in any way glorified. And to add insult to injury, he has to do tonight’s show in front of a former television presenter turned cult hero who sits in the front row and steadfastly refuses to crack a smile throughout the whole hour.

Luckily for Hall, this minor celebrity is the only member of the sold-out audience not to thoroughly enjoy Vice-Captain Loser. Even the young woman who protests at his repeated use of one particularly offensive swear-word is placated when Hall—who is probably too nice for this business—proceeds to replace it, for the rest of the show, with the word ‘cauliflower’.

Ostensibly a whistle-stop tour through the most awkward and embarrassing moments of the Jewish-Catholic Londoner’s awkward and embarrassing life, it turns out to be an unusually upbeat and optimistic show, as Hall examines the ways we can use childishness as way to cope with the worst that life throws at us.

A master of the self-effacing joke and completely unafraid to make a fool of himself, Hall is probably the pick of the so-called “loser” comedians at this years Fringe. Thanks to American namesake Rich, though, he is probably only the second best stand-up called Hall. His Dad must be very proud.