Live Review: The Fast Show Live @ Edinburgh's Usher Hall

How can a man in a wig and fake moustache sitting next to an empty chair for under ten seconds, no words uttered, make my eyes damp?

When that man is John Thomson onstage at The Fast Show Live at Edinburgh's Usher Hall and the empty chair represents the absence of the late, great Caroline Aherne.

But the rest of the evening I'm glad to say was a joyous celebration of 31 (the 30th anniversary itself was in 2024) years of The Fast Show, the sketch show that discarded the sometimes laborious build-up of jokes and went straight to the funny bits.

I remember watching it as a teen and, of course, parroting catchphrases such as: “Oh, suit you, sir”, “Cheesy peas” and “Nice” to name only a few. This was round the time the teenage me had become disillusioned with chart music, so UK comedy shows were my rock and roll. I’d much prefer watching The Fast Show, Goodness Gracious Me, Red Dwarf, etc, than listening to the radio back then.

The format they'd chosen for the show was, ahem, brilliant. A silver-haired Higson was first on-stage, telling the audience this was the first time they'd brought the show north of the border, then spoke of the genesis of The Fast Show when as a youngster he met… cue Paul Whitehouse creeping on stage with a bottle of champagne and donning a thin pencil moustache. “Me?” was all he said to receive a second round of applause. The two friends reminisced about old times; being in a band together and starting to write for Harry Enfield before starting to put together their own comedy and recruiting performers and writers. Enter Mark Williams who mentioned during their chat that he hadn't been a writer so “just did as you told me to”. Over the course of the first half, we then were greeted with Arabella Weir riffing off her ‘Does My Bum Look Big In This?” character, and then Simon Day and John Thomson, the latter two entered the stage together as the strange, silent duo, Jack Pot and Tom Bola, who if memory serves me well, featured for less than a minute during one episode in the first or second series. Such are the memorable characters the show has given us, that even the briefest are remembered.

Once all six were on stage and reminiscing, talk of course turned to Caroline Aherne, who passed away in 2016 from cancer. They then left the stage as a montage of Caroline’s Fast Show characters were shown. It was after the montage ended that the ‘empty chair’ mentioned at the beginning of this post happened. It was a lovely nod to their colleague and friend.

The second act, after a twenty minute interval, leant more into the sketches and they came thick and fast. Almost every character I could think of made an appearance; from Swiss Tony to Weir’s ‘No Offence’ character, from Ted and Ralph to Jesse’s Diets. Some of these were very brief, just like they were on the show, so they were able to fit in a lot more (‘Oh, suit you, Sir!’).

I watched all six closely during the show and I did get a real sense that they were enjoying donning the wigs and costumes and playing these characters again. There was no feeling of them going through the motions. There were also moments of corpsing: at one point, during the last sketch just a look from Day had Higson giggling.

I see they’ve extended their run into 2026 so if you were a fan back in the day and are unsure whether to go see it, I urge you to do so. I knew it would be fun, but it exceeded my expectations.

Which was nice.

Because I have an aversion to taking pictures of people (and it’s a faff to try and take pics with a broken arm), this is the only photo I managed to take as we waited for the show to start.