Her agent was obviously displeased. One of the UK's youngest-ever MPs, Mhairi Black, was interviewed by a newspaper in June to find out her plans for the future. She's trying stand-up, but the article extended to thousands of words without answering the question.
Black served as the SNP's deputy leader just a few months ago. She is currently performing Politics Isn't for Me at an Edinburgh Fringe lunchtime slot at the Gilded Balloon. Her show is wedged between a magician and a performance titled "Primary School Assembly Bangers Live!"
It appears that Black didn't require the extra publicity if, as any inexperienced comedian will tell you, she neglected to promote her act. The entire run for this month is already sold out, and when she stepped onto the stage on Friday, she was met with prolonged applause.
Although the blurb promises “brutally honest” revelations, this solid hour’s focus is the humdrum slog of being an MP, sitting in the Commons for seven or eight hours at a time, barred from getting up even to use the bathroom. “Everybody pocket-munches,” she explains, giving a memorable impression of Ian Paisley Jr leaning over to ask her: “Do you wanna sweetie?”
Parliamentarians who abhor each other’s views find a way to muddle along as colleagues. The DUP’s Jim Shannon, for instance, although opposed to same-sex marriage, was one of the first to congratulate Black on her wedding to her wife. (Perhaps, she jokes, he mistook her for a bloke.)
Surprisingly, there’s little anger here. Score-settling is kept till the very end – she names and shames two MPs who criticised her while she was on sick-leave – and what barbs there are point mostly at her own party. A montage of headlines reminds the audience of other SNP members’ awful actions.
Her fiercest critique is reserved for Westminster itself, from the archaic lobby-voting system to the building’s physical decline. The show’s entertaining middle section feels like a guided tour from a mischievous janitor: mind the broken window, look out for the loose flooring. As she rightly points out, “if it was any other building, health and safety would shut it in a heartbeat”. Here are the buckets, catching drops from the leaking roof. Here’s the cafeteria, its floor peppered with mouse-droppings. (We’re treated to photos).
Oh, and here’s the lobby bathroom where Black hid to delay a vote on Gaza, ending up locked in a toilet cubicle with a Conservative MP who’d had the same idea.
Comedy shows lacking actual comedy are often disparaged as mere Ted Talks. But this “Ned talk” swerves that criticism by remembering to keep up a consistent gag-count, delivered with the confidence familiar from her time in the Commons.
Anyone already favourably disposed to Black can add a star to the rating above; anyone who can’t stand her should dock one. But the merely curious, hoping for an hour’s educational entertainment, won’t leave disappointed. Black may end up back in Westminster one day, but as a comedy critic, I’d rather see her aiming for a less dingy venue, with fewer drunken hecklers. Perhaps the Frog and Bucket.
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