Infant Hercules

The Fringe is bloated with middle-class drama students and is more expensive for those performing than it is for those coming to watch the shows. This squeezes out less well-off artists and creates an imbalance of voices on the comedy circuit. That's a pretty succinct way of expressing what Chris McGlade sets out to argue with his hour-long show Infant Hercules, only without the 60 minutes of invective and misplaced rage that goes along with it.

Chris McGlade is a proud working class man from the ‘boro (Middlesborough that is, the Infant Hercules of the title, which refers to the town's strong industrial past) who laments his place as an ‘inbetweener’ in the comedy world: too working class for the "liberal London comedy circuit" and too intelligent for the "Northern working men’s club circuit". He has several legitimate beefs but never quite manages to legitimise them, instead spouting boringly offensive Jimmy Saville references and a misguided fat-shaming diatribe that comes only 20 minutes after defending the health problems of the working class and the conglomerates making them obese.

The show lacks dynamism and however much McGlade tries to propel it on through, shouting louder just makes for an uncomfortable hour that he may interpret as people being scared of the truth, but in reality is just an audience waiting for it to be over. He claims to be fighting for change, but his views on race, sexuality and class divides show a man unwilling to embrace it.