It’s been 10 years since Alan Davies’s last standup show, since when, he says, he has had a third child, and surpassed – by distressing margins – the ages of lance corporal Jones in Dad’s Army and “the mad old git in Back to the Future”. Another significant development was his 2020 book revealing the story of his childhood sexual abuse by his father. In his new show, Think Ahead, Davies addresses that on stage – and demonstrates, with reference to his laboured breathing, that he is experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder while doing so.
That can’t be anything other than a compelling stage moment, to see a “people-pleasing comedian” (his words) of 30 years’ standing open up – and so rawly – about a difficult subject unaddressed in his comedy until now. Davies does so with honesty and a lightness of touch. He acknowledges that it’s an awkward topic for mirth, and makes good choices about when to set the jokes aside and when to find the funny. The funny? This was a dad who made colour copies of his child sexual abuse images on the household printer (“How many trips to Rymans?!”) and whose diary, when unearthed by Davies years later, focused exclusively on golf.
Davies’s abuse is not the main focus of Think Ahead, far from it, and the remainder delivers one big-laughs set-piece after another. There is material about his youngest son, now nine, and some choice ranting in Alf Garnett-alike character as a man apoplectic about Ulez. There’s also plenty of blue humour, of a type that couldn’t fail to tickle a crowd, but which Davies elevates with his vivid image-making – of the sexual position you should adopt in the event of Viagra-induced heart attack, say, or of his experience delivering a poo sample for cancer screening.
How do these very disparate routines fit together? You could argue that the childhood abuse material is dissonant with the broad sex comedy elsewhere. It also underpins it somehow, offsetting with shade the light of Davies’s default people-pleasing superficiality, making the laughs wilder because they are harder won. The upshot is a striking new show, a cross-section of the 59-year-old’s life now that reveals parts his previous shows couldn’t reach.
• At Orchard at Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh, until 10 August. Then touring from 19 September.
• All our Edinburgh festival reviews.
• The NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331
