David Baddiel Fame Not The Musical Review
David Baddiel
Fame: Not the Musical
The Lowry, Manchester
Reviewed by Catherine Joyce
Last night we visited The Lowry in Salford for the first night of David Baddiel’s new stand up show “Fame: Not the Musical”.
David has not toured for 15 years, having giving up stand-up comedy, in his own words, “partly my own decision, partly by popular demand”. This show marks his return to the stage and is all about the ups and downs of fame, based on his experience and observations over the past 30 years.
He first started performing with Rob Newman in the Mary Whitehouse Experience and went on to top the charts with “Three Lions” however more recently he has concentrated on writing novels and a screen play and doesn’t feature in the media as much as he once did. Consequently he has noticed that members of the public assume that since he is no longer on TV, he must be down on his luck, rather than choosing to work on alternative projects and this theme reappears throughout the show.
He talks intelligently about fame and uses visual aids to illustrate with comedic effect. Screenshots of his Twitter feed illustrate how the public now feels they have ownership of a celebrity and that they can criticize or judge without caring about the person behind the personality. His first-hand experience with trolls provides a great number of laughs.
Being a celebrity means you mix in the same circles as other celebrities and there are plenty of funny tales to tell with Russell Brand, Madonna and Peter Gabriel all featuring. He also recalls meeting Andrew Lloyd Webber who was convinced that David was actually Ben Elton despite having written The Beautiful Game with Ben previously.
David talks about his early years and being brought up as a Jew in North London. There are early photographs of his family illustrating that many famous people have quite normal beginnings. His children feature throughout the performance and you can tell he is proud of both his family and roots.
Despite his fame he reveals quite a “normal” life, shopping at Aldi and going to the school play; although most of us don’t have Peter Gabriel’s email address to hand!
We thoroughly enjoyed this show; the content was excellent and was delivered smoothly. An added bonus was the encore where David tried out new material that he was considering using in a later show. This went down well with the audience and was a good end to the evening.
Rating: 5/5 
For more information about shows at The Lowry visit www.thelowry.com.
