Greg Davies: Firing Cheeseballs at a Dog Review

Greg Davies: Firing Cheeseballs at a Dog

Let’s be honest, comedians are often the end product of a life lived and failed. The Fringe involves us laughing at, not with, the morons pretending to be statues on the Royal Mile, the failed magic tricks and the atrocious organisation at the venues. Despite his achievement of being very tall, Greg Davies is no exception to this rule of thumb. 

Stumbling onto the stage, Davies glances at the bitter lemon of life and takes a large bite out of it – his face responding accordingly throughout the show. A veteran of the teaching profession, his 20s consisted of enduring some larger than life pupils, before slipping outside after lessons for a smoke and a cry. Sad, but also quite funny.

He has, however, devised a philosophy to get round the problems of depression and feelings of insignificance. It involves simply relishing certain moments of life – gems in the metaphorical manure existence. These moments are quite unconnected with the rest of existence and void of consequence; how the cow of eternity managed to swallow the precious stone on the celestial field is irrelevant. Thus Davies proceeds to announce the first biography which has absolutely no meaning or real point. Firing cheeseballs from a child’s catapult at a Spanish dog, for example, is a good starting point.

Don’t expect insight or intelligence here (remember, he is a drama teacher). Yet as any child will know, despite the essentially useless nature of the subject, the teachers were often the most fun, and Greg Davies is no exception.