At the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe, Amy Gledhill won best show for Make Me Look Fit on the Poster, ostensibly a cheery collection of stories about the weird and wonderful things that happen to her. But under the guise of feelgood comedy with herself as the butt of many of the gags, Gledhill cleverly weaves in a thoughtful study of female body image and self-esteem.
Her Soho residency is the last stage of the Hull comic's sellout post-Fringe tour, and she immediately establishes a rapport with the audience, encouraging them to throw knickers at her as if she were a rock star of a certain vintage (underwear provided by the entertainer). It's utterly daft and winning, much like the comic herself.
The show itself centres on two long-form anecdotes, as Gledhill talks about two incidents she experienced, and the effect they had on her life.
She starts with a silly one – her less than stellar performance at the outdoor adventure Go Ape, where she was trying to impress a lad she calls “Fit Simon”. She readily admits to being rather unfit, so what was she thinking, several pints in, to taking part in a pastime that participants in Gladiators might use as a training model? In ended, as you might imagine, in tears, with Gledhill stranded and “hanging like a ginger bauble” from the treetops.
Along the way there are a lot of amusing tangents as she talks about oral sex – or “willy kissing” as she calls it – incompatible boyfriends, the joys of a Toby Carvery, shocking her neighbours with her habit of disrobing completely the minute she gets home, and accidentally over-ordering loo rolls.
The second strand – of the difference between having confidence and self-esteem – starts with a cringe-making anecdote about Gledhill not recognising (and unintentionally patronising) a star of one of the biggest streaming franchises of recent times. It morphs easily into an examination of the casualness of men's cruelty to women and how frequently women are made to feel bad or mad for calling out poor male behaviour.
The laughs come frequently and this is a cleverly constructed show, one that examines real-life problems for so many women, but never in a way that feels loaded or excluding for the men in the audience, and tonally Gledhill keeps the positivity throughout, despite the shift in subject matter. The humour is often delightfully bawdy, too, making the examination of some taxing issues even more pleasurable.
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