Brett Blake is pretty scathing about the new title for his Edinburgh show.  In Melbourne, where it was shortlisted for the Comedy Award it was called Little Turd.

 

Little Turd is far more appropriate.

 

Blake comes from a remote working class town in Western Australia, where swearing at kids is the norm.  His Dad’s a miner, his mum is a special needs teacher.  Brett himself, as a kid, was considered to have special needs.

 

He’s a phenomenal storyteller – and he takes us right back there, to his childhood – charging around on his bike, underage drinking at the weekend, sneaking in to parties in the posh town along the road. We see him as a teenager - a boisterous, disruptive, inattentive kid, obsessed with different makes of car, bumping along the highways in search of adventure.

 

It’s great fun.  Even though it’s kind of bleak – it’s OK.  He was loved by his family.  He was enjoying himself – although it’s easy to see why he was driving his family and his teachers mad.

 

Until something really bad happens.   A conjunction of events involving a girl, a party and an unlicensed driver come together and land little tearaway Brett in some very serious trouble.

 

Aged 17, Brett was on the national news – held up as an example of wayward youth.   There were calls for him to be treated as an adult criminal – to be punished severely.  He was facing a prison sentence of 10 years.

 

Brett keeps us with him right up until the crime, until the police station, until the court case.  We know he’s OK, because he’s here in front of us, but he makes us feel how close it was and how lucky he was to escape. Friends of his were not so lucky.

 

He’s seriously dyslexic – so I’m not sure the story is written – but it is told beautifully.  We care deeply about the kid he once was, even though we can also see he was pretty annoying to be around.  He still has a firecracker energy about him but he uses it to light up his narrative with laughs and thrills.

 

You’re on the edge of your seat right until the last moment when he reveals the strange and moving turn of events that led to him being saved.  He was given a second chance – while lots of other kids like him are not.

 

This isn’t a poor me story – but it is one shot through with tension and saturated with emotion.   Brett ends with a passionate plea to for people to remember what happened to him when we about hear about other kids in trouble.

 

He will make you laugh with his antics and his idiocy but this is a story with real heart.  You are unlikely to get through the hour without a tear in your eye.

 

 

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