Comedian Rachel Fairburn bringing new show ‘Side-Eye’ to Cambridge

Rachel Fairburn, described as a “razor-sharp observational comic who pulls no punches with her material” by Broadway World, is on her 32-date Side-Eye tour at present, which kicked off in Oxford last month.

This new series of shows, which includes a Cambridge date later this month, follows on from her highly successful 40-date Showgirl tour and also All Killa No Filla Live!, an on-stage version of the popular podcast that she co-hosts with fellow stand-up, Kiri Pritchard-McLean.

Side-Eye is the very likeable Mancunian comic’s first foray into character comedy and, ahead of a scheduled appearance at last summer’s inaugural Cambridge Comedy Garden comedy festival on Parker’s Piece, she told the Cambridge Independent all about it.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” she said of Side-Eye. “Before I did stand-up, I used to write short little funny stories for my mum and my grandma, and invent characters and things like that.

“And I’ve always found people in general funnier than actual stand-up – like little things that they say and things that they do – and I’ve always been interested in character comedy.

“I’ve just always thought I’d like to try it and thought ‘Now is the time to do it’.”

Rachel portrays seven different characters in the show, “very loosely based around the deadly sins”.

Get ready to meet a self-proclaimed grime artist/sex therapist, your slanderous mate, a loose-lipped Dame, a diva with a restraining order, a feckless man, idle parents, and even the devil herself.

“They’re all connected in some way – sort of,” explained Rachel, who when we spoke was still working on two of the characters, “and I’m enjoying it.”

On the character of the devil, Rachel said: “I love anything spooky and anything creepy… I think it’s quite a bit of a trope actually to be a devil on a poster – I think loads of comedians have done that.

“But the reason I wanted that is because one of my characters is going to be the devil, and she is going to tie in with the other characters in some way.

“But she’s not going to be a horrible devil, she’s going to be quite cheery actually, quite chilled out, a bit laid back.”

[Read more: Rachel Fairburn: ‘We’re funny when we’re annoyed’, Rachel Fairburn heads to Cambridge Comedy Garden]

Side-Eye is coming to the Cambridge Junction (J2) on Friday, 21 March. Tickets, priced £20.50 (£18.50 concession), are available from junction.co.uk. For more on Rachel, go to rachelfairburn.com.