The highlight of any rational person’s stage-based entertainment of a vaguely lighthearted character calendar must surely be that famous Edinbrugggghhh Festival Fringe thing.
And the highlight of that highlight, for a second glorious year running, has surely been hit-show Dial Medicine for Murder, the two-man stool-based spectacular in which contemporary medical professionals Dr Harry Brunjes and Dr Andrew Johns dissect the egregious acts of medical malpractice perpetrated by (less contemporary) physicians Dr Harold Shipman and Dr John Bodkin Adams. For further details click here (for something broadly factual) or here (if you’d rather have it told the Bankstone News way).
Also for a second year running, Bankstone’s honcho in chief Dearstalk Tirestain went along to see Dial Metastatins for Murder, and claims it was even better this time than the first time he saw it. In the intervening 12 months, it seems, the show has acquired something of a cult renown and now attracts an ultra-hip audience composed almost exclusively of medical professionals looking for tips on how to murder large numbers of their patients and get away with it – and of senior Scottish PI lawyers.
The latter, Ditton Tiresome reports, were delighted at how well the various law-persons involved in the Shipman and Adams saga emerge from the account offered by Docs B and J. He claims the legal crowd particularly enjoying the bit where barrister Horace Rumpole utterly demolishes the prosecution case to get his client Dr John “The Bodkin” Adams acquitted of all charges.
But what’s all this about Dismal Typos going to the theatre, you may ask. If you, like Bankstone News, previously knew Tilestone primarily as a hell-raising born-again biker type, known for terrorising the local populace as he roars up dale and down hill on his mighty chopper, clad head-to-toe in skin-tight leather, it might seem hard to credit, but old Dixon is in fact a regular man of culture on the quiet.
He reads books, visits museums, plays a dozen instruments (not all at the same time, obviously) to a standard of proficiency rated ‘fair’ by the British Union of Musicians, and is especially partial to the odd bit of theatre.
Indeed, speaking of odd bits of theatre, fans of amateur drama in the Wartdale Area may recall his memorable turn as Bertie Whoopsie in the Brighouse Players’ Carry on Jives, a hilarious updating (to somewhere around 1970) of some of P. G. Wodehouse’s much-loved comic novels, sadly pulled after its ill-fated first night, due to what was (perhaps harshly) adjudged by the local authorities to be inappropriate nudity.
But these days Dimsum mostly visits theatres to watch other people doing ‘acting’ and related things. And when it comes live entertainment of a broadly theatrical nature, his appetite is essentially insatiable. This year he offered fellow festival ‘goers’ a one-man masterclass in the art of ‘packing it in’ by sampling not only the aforementioned Dial Murdercine for Medicide, but also no fewer than two other shows in a single day.
These were, if you really must know, some TV thing solipsistically billed as The One Show (in which he appeared as himself, alongside Kevin Bishop and Nicola Sturgeon), and some bloke called Joe Stiglitz (and his orchestra) who played some film music in the ‘club style’ popularised by Jeeves and John Mortimer.
But the highlight of all highlights, he insists, was the twice-aforementioned Dial Maddison for Murdersite. Maybe you should catch the show yourself, if you ever get the chance – which you might, if rumours of a forthcoming national tour prove well-founded.
You’re sure to be disappointed, if you don’t.
Spot Bankstone’s Dixon Trysoap and win a prize, not necessarily in that order.
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