Nick Doody

Source: The List (Issue 587)
Date: 4 October 2007
Written by: Brian Donaldson

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Stand-up

There’s something oddly familiar about Nick Doody’s sense of outrage with the world around him. Something marginally haunting about the way he attacks the areas of life that really do need a good kicking, whether it’s religious fundamentalism or social hypocrisy. If you can conjure up the spirit of Bill Hicks in your mind when watching Doody stalk his stage (usually dressed in black), that shouldn’t be a coincidence. Doody is a fan. And no wonder: as a student stand-up he even supported Hicks on what turned out to be his last UK tour, an experience that no doubt helped him write an unpublished book in 2000 on Hicks’ life and work entitled Telling the Truth, Laughing.

After getting a stab at comedy glory with a place in the So You Think You’re Funny final in 1997 (losing out to some lad called Peter Kay), Doody finally made his Fringe debut in 2006 with Before He Kills Again which started with a song about scary clowns and just got darker, raging against the wrongdoings of humanity. So dark are his musings, judging by the night I saw him that summer, he appears to attract a quasi-surrealist, passive-aggressive type of heckler, the kind who won’t go away until they are asked to do so several times by security. In this year’s Fringe show, Hypocrite, Doody found room to discuss such arch subjects as racism, Britishness, terrorism, soya milk and Wiggles the Naughty Worm. The long-dead comic master would surely approve. (Brian Donaldson)

The Stand, Glasgow, Thu 11–Sun 14 Oct

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