ONCE upon a time, Bethany Black was troubled soul Ben Horsley who, through force of spirit and a bit of surgery, became the country's only "goth, lesbian, transsexual comedian".
Black clearly has a story and a half to tell. She brought us the bit
s about suicide attempts last summer in her debut Fringe show, Beth Becomes Her, and this year's follow-up, Love and a Colt 45, features her drug and alcohol addiction. None of it sounds particularly cheery stuff, but during this stint as part of the Wicked Wenches bill she displayed an amiable personality and winningly humble stage manner which suggested you can jump aboard her ride without grazing your soul to its permanent disrepair.
Kicking off with the stand-up trope of a comic comparing themselves to two unlikely famous people (Black plumps for an unholy matrimony of Marilyn Manson and Harry Potter), she then proceeded to assault every self-respecting comic's most loathed right-leaning newspaper in a section which could have been named "what did you do in the war, Daily Mail proprietor?"
Easy target maybe, but there were some sweetly succinct wordplays around PDF files and burning crosses to keep things bubbling away nicely, before she concluded with a sip of her tea and a tale about visiting a cashpoint in Manchester's most notorious postcode in the middle of the night.
With the raising of her own bar that further stage experience will bring, Bethany Black's comedy career should live happily ever after.
