Julian Clary’s return to the Fringe is a joyful innuendo-fest
Julian Clary’s return to the Fringe is a joyful innuendo-fest
Dominic CavendishSat, August 15, 2026 at 1:27 PM UTC
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Fully Dilated is Julian Clary’s first Edinburgh Fringe show since 2009
“We will be talking about things that would get me flogged in Dubai,” announces Julian Clary – pioneer and doyen of gay comedy – at the start of Fully Dilated, his first show on the Fringe in 17 years.
Preeningly camp, he breezes onto the Assembly main stage looking – thanks to make-up – younger than his 67 years. “It’s a wonder I’m still here!” he remarks. The passage of time hangs over the hour in ways that valuably – and unusually for him – combine light with shade. The title is a double entendre, referencing bodily functions, yes, but also Clary’s declaratory mode.
Clad in a sparkling jacket and platform boots redolent of his glittery panto turns, he airs subjects broached in his 2005 autobiography, A Young Man’s Passage. He revisits the sexual urges and splurges of his hedonistic youth, and the growing shadow of Aids too, which claimed his boyfriend Christopher in 1991.
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Clary making a panto turn in Cinderella at Brighton Pavillion, August 2000 - Fiona Hanson/PA
It’s one thing to share that on the page; on stage, it takes courage to revisit his “battle of happiness and sadness”, during which his career took off just as the disease took hold. “I was outwardly functioning – inwardly combusting,” he explains. A doctor prescribed sedatives – so “everything was pushed down”. Amid the fog of drugs and grief came his notorious, X-rated gag about the former chancellor Norman Lamont during the 1993 British Comedy Awards. He experienced cancellation avant la lettre, but the resulting lull let him get back on track. “I’ve dilated… everything’s gushing out now whether we like it or not,” he deadpans.
That insatiable appetite for brazen innuendo is always to dominate proceedings, warding off earnestness. “I’m as tough as old boots, awful things don’t seem to affect me,” he says. Perhaps that goes to the heart of why he has survived so long and become a national treasure. In his off-hand manner lies the vestige of our stiff upper-lip. Reassuring, yet subversive: Clary’s immaculate turns of phrase sheath explicit material, making it sound as innocuous as a cup of tea. His mocking of heterosexuals is gentle (he mock-yawns in boredom while engaging with one of that breed in the front row): an almost jovial parody of the intolerance once meted out to the gay community.
Clary: ‘I’m as tough as old boots, awful things don’t seem to affect me’ - Matt Writtle
He rounds off the set with a characteristically flatly intoned, movingly bespoke version of My Way, celebrating his resolve to “live the way I truly feel”. It’s great to have him back, even if only for a short stint – he’s off to the Palladium’s Jesus Christ Superstar next to give us his Herod.
Fully Dilated by Julian Clary is at the Assembly (Ballroom) until Aug 23, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. For tickets: edfringe.com
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
