| There is a long
tradition of camp humour within the United Kingdom, stretching right back
to the days of the music hall. But all too often the camp has been the
humour, the joke has been in the limpness of the wrist. With today’s
more sophisticated audiences, and more tolerant world, such acts would
find it hard to make any headway outside of the most unreconstructed
northern clubs.
Craig Hill is campness personified. To the thumping
tones of the Scissor Sisters he bursts onto the stage in black leather
kilt and muscle shirt barely concealing a pumped up body and performing a
high-energi disco dance. But unlike the likes of Julian Clary or Larry
Grayson, this no exaggeration or put-on act, this is Craig just being his
own over-exuberant self, and we wouldn’t change a single hair on his
head, if he had any.
Indeed, when you get past the flamboyance, much of
Hill’s humour is a very honest examination of what it is like to grow up
knowing that you are somehow “different” to your peers. So lines like
“David came to the door and asked if Craig would be coming out, my
brothers told him they imagined I would eventually,” are funny but also
take on an added poignancy when you realise that such a life cannot have
been easy on the streets of Glasgow.
The central thrust of the show is his love of music
and how it developed over those formative years, requiring him to burst
frequently into song and reveal a rather lovely and pitch perfect high
baritone voice.
A star in his native Scotland but not well known
outside it, Hill has such an infectiously warm nature that it is almost
impossible not to be drawn in and feel like you are in the company of an
old friend.
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