Dominic Frisby's Financial Game Show

Dominic Frisby
Gilded Balloon Teviot

Dominic Frisby

Dominic Frisby combines life as a financial journalist with occasional forays into comedy. This project attempts to meld the two into an hour-long Edinburgh entertainment.

The greying, bearded star dresses like a TV personality in a dizzying jacket that could have been designed by Bridget Riley.

His demeanour is almost as vibrant, during a presentation that takes the form of a TV-style game show about the world of finance.

By answering a series of impossible yes/no questions, the audience is narrowed down to a handful of supposed experts who then take part in a series of contests, attempting to win a £500 prize by discovering the combination to open a safe.

At the performance in question, it quickly became clear that men in their 70s are best suited to this pursuit and, indeed, one of them walked off with the big prize, thanks to a great deal of help from the baying audience and backstage team.

Before that, he and his fellows had to undergo various types of ritual humiliation, the epitome of which was a head-to-head quiz in which both competitors failed to answer a single question correctly.

TV addicts will generally enjoy the light-hearted style and competition, while along the way they will pick up a great deal of arcane information that may never be of use again but can be entertaining. Apparently more people visit the World Cup than the Edinburgh Festival, which is remarkable.

More seriously, they might also spot early on that this show has been turned into a marketing exercise, thanks to the efforts of sponsors willing to shell out £500 prize money each performance as well as giving away an assortment of not necessarily terribly desirable goodies.

Reviewer: Philip Fisher

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