“Anonymous prankster” is what the media calls Simon Brodkin, a man more famous for his stunts and his cheeky chappie character-act Lee Nelson than for anything he’s done under his own name. Screwed Up is the comic’s latest bid to change that, building on 2019’s 100% Simon Brodkin, with which he first stepped out from behind the mask of the man who showered Fifa’s Sepp Blatter with banknotes and supplied Donald Trump with swastika-embossed golfballs. Will it get the 45-year-old the name recognition he craves?
Screwed Up certainly delivers as standup. Brodkin can turn a fine gag: the first half is given over to impish social commentary, as our host publicly repents of handing Theresa May her P45 (given how awful her successors proved), jokes about our ailing public services, and serves up a nicely twisty riff on illegal paedophile hunters and their undercover pursuers.
But the effort to give definition to the authentic Simon, rather than the alter egos of old, still feels like a work in progress. Yes, Brodkin has an interesting story to tell, and is having a go at self-disclosure. The matter of Screwed Up, when he eventually arrives at it, concerns his discovery of his Russian ancestry, as well as the recent ADHD diagnosis that made sense, at last, of his restless, dopamine-seeking brain. But both subjects, either of which might form the basis of a whole show, are given fairly cursory treatment.
He spends more time on ADHD, lamenting his “broken pleasure centre” and the rackety life it has driven him to lead. The material on his heritage would justify more stage time, given Russia’s current prominence, and Brodkin’s identification with Volodymyr Zelenskiy – also Jewish, also a comedian, and with whom the Londoner compares himself (to his own detriment) throughout the show.
A certain superficiality clings to his treatment of both topics, however. You can’t fault Brodkin for gags or geniality. But it can feel as if you’re getting wisecracks and self-mockery at the expense of intimacy; that Brodkin’s jokes conceal rather than reveal who he is. What he does show us isn’t anonymous, but neither – yet – is it wholly distinct.
