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   Web Issue 3503 July 4 2009   
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The Janey Godley Chat Show, The Green Room, Guthrie Street
COLIN SOMERVILLEAugust 06 2007


Rating: *****

No frills, no fancy stuff, just an abundance of frank and fearless conversation, conducted with customary ribald authority by Scotland's radge renaissance woman.

To be this entertaining in front of barely more than a dozen people off the beaten Fringe track requires something a bit special.

Yet despite being deprived of her third guest, Robin Ince, by cross-town festival traffic, Godley simply seizes on the extra time to wring more out of the two who have turned up, namely Peter Buckley Hill and Paul Sinha.

Who would have thought that the Fringe veteran raconteur, comedian and comic songwriter and the award-nominated gay Indian doctor would have made such a fascinating chat show combination.

Faced with a less-than-capacity crowd the talk briefly turns to equally sparse audiences, Sinha admitting to a throng of six comprising Australian barmen and Israeli tourists, with Buckley Hill trumping that with a solitary Radio 4 producer who turned up to see him at the Hill Street venue in 1994. Rather than dwell on well-trodden coming out territory, we instead discover that Sinha is a football fanatic whose allegiances lie with Liverpool and Celtic, as Kenny Dalglish was his childhood hero.

That said, Godley's inaugural trip down the road of gaydar.com was paved with comedy gold, and the sudden "have you ever had a homosexual experience" poser for Peter utterly priceless.

She seized on momentary hesitation, insisting innocently that it was a yes or no question.

In a live Fringe format the whole point is surely to escape the conventions of the television chat show, and this is how it should be done.


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