Tom Wrigglesworth's name really suits him as at first glance he looks rather bemusing and eccentric. It sounds like a made up pseudonym or an alias, perhaps for a Merchant Ivory spoof or as a Duke in an old Hugh Hudson movie. ‘Wrigglesworth to see his Highness', ‘Pass the port, Wrigglesworth, there's a good chap', ‘Dammit Tiffy where the bloody hell is Wrigglesworth?' Etc., you get the idea.
He's not like that in real life, of course, although should he stick on a top hat and tails he'd have a successful career as a character actor in period docudramas. Just add a monocle and timepiece on a chain and you're away.
He is what appears to be almost seven feet of skinny gangly tallness. I saw him walk into the venue with his smart, but slightly too small green jacket and with a hint of a stoop. Topping it off is a frizzy, almost afro shock of blonde hair. You couldn't look more distinct if you tried and I feel the name and appearance will serve him well in the years to come. In real life he's as affable, engaging and humble as any Tom, Dick or Harry and my pointless reservations and pre-judgements were swept away within minutes of the start of his show.
A few days before the show I'd been to see the wonderful Janeane Garofolo at the Gilded Balloon. As I came out I ran into a friend and went for a quick drink to catch up. This inevitably turned into a typical night of unplanned fringe carnage and 87 pints later we were sitting in The Loft Bar schmoozing with all the bright and beautiful VIP's (the future scum of the earth), when an attractive and pleasant young actress unceremoniously sat down at our table. Her first inebriated words were ‘yooh gotch-to go 'n' shee Tom Biggleshwirth, heesh ****ing brilliant. Besht things I've sheeeen in the whole ****ing fesshtival (burp hic).'
My colleague and I immediately tied her up and waterboarded her in an attempt to establish if she was Tom Wrigglesworth's publicity agent or a human viral advertising board but, no, after a significant amount of torture and poking with a soft cushion she turned out to be the genuine article. She was a bona fide random punter who had just been to the show and wanted to tell everyone how great it was. The power of word of mouth. I duly trotted along to see it and I can now happily add my superlatives: Go and see Tom Wrigglesworth's show, it's the best thing I've seen at the festival'.
The audience is seated around a small table upon which a model toy train on a circular tracks is going round and round passing by various everyday objects that double up as landmarks. An upturned opened book is a tunnel, a pile of staples a tower block and so on. After a brief blast of familiar cello music Tom sits down at the table and begins to write his now infamous letter to Richard Branson. His thoughts are heard on tape from a recorded voiceover as he struggles to format the letter properly and introduce the topic and style of the show to the audience. It's a clever way to set the scene, both funny and portentous of the story that is to come.
Although he then switches to standup comic routine, the content of the show is really in the style of your good mate in a pub telling you ‘a funny thing happened on the way to....' type story, or a relaxed fireside chat, although of course this is all without the pub or, ahem, the fire.
Without giving away too many details of his adventure, the rest of the time is spent relating to us an incident that happened to him on a Virgin train from Manchester to London, sometime in the last year or so. A pompous jobsworthy and morally corrupt train guard called Simon (Tom lets us know that on his name badge it has the unusual spelling of A-D-O-L-F) forces Lena, an elderly lady sitting nearby, to pay £120 for a new ticket because she's unwittingly boarded an earlier train.
Lena is left in tears as now she cant buy her grandchildren Christmas presents. Outraged, Tom re-enacts screaming blue murder in his face and then reveals that it's what he would have liked to have said if he'd had the guts instead of the slightly trembling and high pitched ‘oooh that's a bit harsh'. So having failed to dissuade Simon of his indefensible behaviour he decides to take a collection from all the punters on the train and manages to return £120 to Lena. This simple and noble act of everyday kindness then triggers a near riot on the platform at Euston and his arrest for begging.
That's the basic outline of what happened but it's in his brilliant observations of the people on the train and his re-enactment of their personalities (he describes the train guard's face ‘bubbling with building rage like the lid on a kettle that isn't on properly as it comes to the boil'). There are also some really extraordinary almost Hollywood-like twists and turns in this real life tale as he encounters the people (a lawyer in particular) who will eventually see him through this odyssey. At the end of the show he reveals that in writing to Virgin he was able to get them to change the rules of conduct on their trains (a few personal triumphs described during the show elicited spontaneous cheers and applause from the audience) and in a killer emotional punch near the end he plays an audio message from Lena's mother which had me holding back the tears. I know, I know - I'm a big softy.
It's a non stop rollercoaster of belly laughs alongside the collective shared outrage of corruption and injustice. It's also the classic fairytale of the little guy standing up for the rest of us and unbelievably, winning the day. He admits in the end that he embellished a few moments and used poetic license to make details more savoury and jokes more funny but it's the over-arching truth of it that matters. It was an inspiring and uplifting experience and I am glad to have shared the journey with him. The drunk lady we tortured turned out to be right on the money.
Times: daily until 30 August, 7pm