Review: FASCINATING AIDA: 40TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW, London Palladium

The UK can’t claim too many music groups with the impressive longevity or sheer depravity of Fascinating Aïda. Celebrating forty years of dropping jaws with a set of songs that still amuse, shock and titillate, they return for yet another tour up and down the country. 

Best known for Youtube hit “Cheap Flights” and the deliciously unsubtle “Dogging”, this tour has more than enough jolly singalongs to go along with those fan favourites. The current lineup of Dillie Keane, Adèle Anderson and Liza Pulman (here accompanied by Michael Roulston) have been together for around twenty years (barring a short spell when Sarah-Louise Young filled Pulman’s shoes). Their confidence and synergy shines through whether they are gathered around a piano, throwing shapes around the stage to hip hop-inspired “Down With The Kids” or robot-dancing as they bemoan modern technology in the Kraftwerkesque “AI”.

Four decades on, their macabre humour echoes that of Tom Lehrer; while the Sixties satirist gleefully considered the prospect of poisoning pigeons in the park, Keane and company sing about persuading their frail parent to jump on a plane to Dignitas (“Mother, Dear Mother”), the downsides of inviting the recently bereaved to social events (“Widow”) and - through near-immobile faces - the extremes some go to to stay looking young (“The Enemy Of Beauty”). 

It’s hard to think of any musical group which revels so much in the zeitgeist. They merrily rip up the rule book on touring in the third age: acts like the Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys and Elton John lean heavily on hits from their first couple of decades but Fascinating Aïda largely abandon their early back catalogue to focus on ever-new ways to expose and ridicule the vagaries of modern society, be it the hoary chestnut of citizenship tests or ripped-from-the-headlines comments on Saltburn and Barbie’s Oscar nominations. Their latest Bulgarian song cycle (a riff on The Mikado’s Little List) takes aim at the post office scandal, Michelle Mone, David Cameron’s peerage and (perhaps with a nod to Lehrer’s “Pollution”) the effect of Brexit laws on water quality.

Like Lehrer, they use jaunty tunes to underscore political messages that make Billy Bragg look like Michael McIntyre. These ladies don’t sit on the fence: “Kangaroo” begins with the lines “If you want to do something good today/Assassinate Trump/He makes a big target/Out there on the stump”. Meanwhile, the operatic “A Tory MP” rattles through a recipe of sorts for a Conservative politician and sums it up memorably with the final refrain of “c*nt c*nt c*nt c*nt c*nt c*nt c*nt” before a picture of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is pulled from a mixing bowl.

There are some softer songs too: the soulful “Old Home” hits hard with its tale of leaving a beloved house behind. In general, though, Fascinating Aïda are not for the faint of heart or the easily offended; their show in Buxton saw someone storm off from the front row mid-song. For those who enjoy being joyfully outraged and politically engaged, this show is an utter treat.

Fascinating Aïda continue at London Palladium until 6 February and then are on tour around the UK.