Simple Town review – these Pythonesque jokers could be your new best friends
Identified as 'four teens in their 30s', Simple Town introduce themselves as they mean to go on: super-casual, faux-naive, coming at one another, and at our expectations, from odd angles. Their first sketch takes us back vaguely in time, to three Nasa bros aghast that a woman has been recruited to their space programme – because 'she can do multiplication in her head!'. Like later scenes, this one contains several movements, the borders porous between them, the comic point forever evolving and slipping beyond your grasp.
If you like that sensation, of laughing without ever fully pinning down why, Simple Town are your new best friends. What's going on in the skit that pairs two cagoule-clad spare thumbs left alone together at their respective partners' reunion? This dotty choreography of social awkwardness extrapolated ad absurdum is as beguiling as it is barely explicable. You could read their firing squad sketch as a brilliant riff on the polarised US, where fierceness of conviction is matched only by woolliness of argument. It's also just a nugget of Pythonesque nonsense about dopey executioners.
Some routines are simpler, like the solipsistic inner monologue of the audience member whose suggestion is accepted for an improv scene. Or like the show's closer, burlesquing middle-class American reverence for old Europe – although even that one morphs halfway into a four Yorkshiremen-style race to the bottom of US education. It's all accomplished with artless slacker panache by Will Niedmann, Caroline Yost, Felipe Di Poi Tamargo and Sam Lanier, posting a welcome reminder of how exciting team comedy can still be.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 24 August
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'I've decided that today is the day I am throwing this battery, chemical, addictive, horrible thing away. I am now doing vapes no more from today. 'I've got the strength to get rid of them. Join me. It's going in the bin, that's it. I've cleared all of my vapes out of the car and everything.' Amy's life was put at risk when she was on the way to receive her organ transplant at the hospital as climate activists blocked the road. Katie explained that Amy only had two weeks to live at the time and 'nearly died' because you only have three hours to get to hospital for a transplant. While she was being rushed to the hospital, the road was blocked by Just Stop Oil, who had staged a protest on the M25. Amy - who had suffered from chronic lung condition idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis - had just weeks left to live until she found a donor for a lung. Speaking on the Private Parts podcast, she said: 'Mum had two weeks left to live at the time. She found a donor. She was waiting five years for a lung. 'It was the day all the oil protesters were on the M25 and you have three hours to get to hospital otherwise you can't have the donor [organ]. 'So they had to get an ambulance. When they were on the motorway, they didn't realise!' However, Katie went on to add that a heroic ambulance driver went on to save the day by cutting through to make sure she got to the hospital on time. She said: 'They had to go up the hard shoulder, and get an ambulance to get through it, because if you're not there you lose it [the lung].' Amy previously hailed the medical staff who carried out her operation as 'amazing' and also paid tribute to the regular faces she saw on every hospital appointment because they meant Katie could feel 'less worried' about her when she was unable to be by her side. Amy and granddaughter Princess Katie's daughter Princess is currently trying to create her own image away from her famous parents after dropping new ITV reality show, The Princess Diaries. Growing rumours of a 'rift' between Katie and Princess have been growing in recent weeks after Katie didn't appear at Princess' 18th birthday party. Reports then claimed the former glamour model was allegedly 'banned' from appearing on the nepo baby's fly-on-the-wall television series. Katie later claimed that it was her daughter's management who had told her not to appear on the show. Yet amid the swirling rumours about a family rift, Katie has called on Peter to sit down with her and 'squash their beef' for the sake of their family. Speaking on the latest on the latest episode of her Katie Price Show podcast, Katie - who is currently recovering from more facial surgery - shared: 'There's no reason why both parents just can't be there to support her.' She continued: 'Now this isn't about me. I have to clarify this. I don't care that I'm not in Princess's show. 'I don't need to raise my profile by being on Princess's show, I do enough stuff. 'All what I want to do, is just whatever my daughter does, and it's the same with Junior, I don't care if I'm in the background, but I want to watch her do her photo shoots, I wanna watch her do her signings, because that's what I did. 'And my mom and you and Nan used to come along and support, and I'm proud of her. And I just wanna be there with her because I now I feel that I've missed out on so much.' Katie went on: 'It's so not fair to bring Princess piggy in the middle. 'So I think it's about time all of us adults just sit down and talk about what their beef is with me and just get over it. 'Life would be more at peace because I don't have a problem. I just think life would be a better place. 'Well, I'm not saying we all have to be best buddies, best friends, but come on. For the sake of the children, there's room for everyone to support your kids. Do you know what I mean? 'I'm not saying I have to stand with them and play happy families.' MailOnline has contacted Peter's representatives comment. It is well known that Katie and Peter don't get on, but the ex model previously thanked her mother Amy for sticking up for her after her daughter Princess was burned as a three-year-old. The incident progressed quickly as soon police were involved after the toddler burned her back on a hot towel rail during a holiday to Switzerland. Amy accused Peter of over-reacting to the incident, insisting it was a minor injury, she told the Daily Mirror at the time: 'I don't understand why Pete is having a go at Kate. 'Her sister Sophie and I were the ones with Princess when it happened and I know it was a fluke accident - and just how minor it is.' She added: 'Princess went straight back to playing. She slept soundly without pain and a week later there was barely a mark on her.' After her mother leaped to her defence, Katie wrote on her Twitter page: 'Love my mum.' Following the incident, police were tipped off and visited Katie at home, but Peter insisted he wasn't the one who contacted them. In a statement on her website, Katie accused Peter of making the incident public to 'score points' and 'portray her as a bad mother.' His publicist Claire Powell said Peter only learned of the investigation when contacted by the police.
