Hold forth for two hours about your low self-worth, and you can start to look very self-involved. Is that the problem, or the point, of Greg Davies’ new show? Ostensibly, Full Fat Legend poses the question “What the hell am I?”, as the Taskmaster man looks past his professional title and family roles to reveal the true Greg beneath. Practically, that means a retread of Davies’ life from 1970s Shropshire via a brief teaching career and nascent celebrity, and around more adventures in poo, pee and wanking than you’d wish on anybody.
You might marvel that a 57-year-old’s gaze remains so directed at the navel, and below. But 12-year-old in a (very) outsized body has always been Davies’ shtick. I found the fixation on bums and willies a bit much in this latest offering, perhaps because it goes on so long. But if, after six decades, Davies’ sense of humour remains juvenilely self-absorbed, at least he has the good grace to acknowledge it, and the craft to often turn it to fine comic effect. See the “face full of new freckles” image-making that accompanies one anecdote about attempting to clean his “baggy bumhole”.
That’s one of several humiliating stories that demonstrate – according to Davies – that he’s not, in fact, a legend, but a complete chump instead. Others include tales of sleepless life with a swollen prostate, and of “dick-dialling” by accident a prominent government minister. We also get the explanation for why Davies turned out this way, with reference to the unreconstructed world of his youth (“It was a different time. It was an awful time”), when parental love was tough and sex education came via the Freemans lingerie catalogue.
A lot of that material feels familiar, but Davies brings great gusto to its revival. Along the way, a handful of stories (one about an eccentric Irish “animal handler”; another about Danny Dyer) de-centre Davies and his ostentatious puerility, which can come as a relief. It’s a show, finally, about one manchild’s struggle to get over himself, his neuroses and ego – and on this evidence, he still has some way to go.
