Matt’s on the fringe with T-Rex comedy

T-REX comic Matt Brierley with Freda Powell, the Mayor of Dinosaur, Colorado

1 More Image(s) In Gallery

EVERY August Scotland’s capital doubles in size and as actors, performers and the downright bizarre descend on the world’s biggest arts festival.

Karen Doherty speaks to a nature conservationist turned comedian who is hoping to take the Edinburgh Fringe by storm on his debut.

FROM the Natural History Museum via an obscure town in Colorado, lunch with Patrick Moore and protests in Italy and Denmark.

Matt Brierley’s journey to Edinburgh has involved a palaeontology quest which has seen him become a pioneer and only exponent of the unlikely subject of dinosaur comedy.

RSPB people engagement officer by day, the 30-year-old from Royton is taking a two-week break from introducing people to peregrine falcons in Somerset or red deer in Dorset for a killer subject.

His one-hour show “T-Rex: A Pack of Lies?” aims to debunk the belief that the bogeyman of the dinosaur world was a scavenger.

Instead, the nature conservationist with a comedy sideline believes he was an altogether more sociable, if still ferocious, pack hunter.

He explained: “I attended an exhibition called ‘Tyrannosauras Rex: the Killer Question’ at the Natural History Museum, asking me to vote whether tyrannosaurus rex was predator or scavenger.

“But my background in ecology told me it might have been a pack hunter so I wrote to the Natural History Museum to share my idea, and they wrote back to say there was no fossil evidence.

“However, since then loads of fossil evidence has come to light and I’ve gone on a quest to reclaim my fact.”

Matt’s journey to get 4,791 people to back his idea — the same number who voted for scavenger at the exhibition — has taken him to Dinosaur in Colorado where he got the mayor’s and therefore, he reasons, the town’s support.

He has held protests at museums in Denmark and Italy, met Goodie turned-ornithologist Bill Oddie and visited eccentric spacewatcher Sir Patrick Moore.

“Meeting Patrick Moore was a real highlight,” explained Matt. “The reason I did that was because in 2005 the International Astronomy Union voted Pluto out of the solar system.

“For 75 years most people thought Pluto was a planet. I thought it was an interesting example where scientists haven’t got it wrong, but for a certain amount of time they presupposed something.

“I wrote to Patrick Moore and explained what I was going to do and he invited me to meet him.”

Comedy has proved a short leap for the former Our Lady’s High School pupil who thinks that it is an ideal way to grab people’s attention.

“I did a lot of power-point presentations during my masters and I always threw a bit of humour in there.

“One of my feedback forms said ‘very good, but remember you are training to be a scientist not a comedian!’.

“I did seem I have this skill to get up in front of a room of people and make them laugh while they are learning something at the same time.

But will the show prove a prehistoric hit or be doomed to extinction?

Matt has already had a good reception at performances in York and Manchester and he added: “I just think I have got nothing to lose.

“It will be a great laugh no matter how it pans out and I am really looking forward to it.”


Mick making his mark

While Matt is a comedy new-boy, Oldham’s Mick Ferry is an old hand who has been wowing audiences in the UK and abroad for over a decade.

Peter Kay’s first-ever support act is described as having “funny bones, a genuine respect for his audiences and the unnerving ability to create huge laughs from whatever enters his head at any given moment”.

He regularly hosts both Manchester and London Comedy Stores, as well as his own Manchester club night, night “Mick Ferry’s Space Cadets”, and recently made his big screen debut in Ken Loach’s acclaimed fantasy-comedy “Looking For Eric” starring Eric Cantona.

He broke into BBC1 prime time television on “Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow”— so why is this his first Edinburgh Fringe?

According to his blurb it fulfils his long-held ambition to win an award. That’s because his show, “The Comedy Final”, sees him become the host and all seven entrants in a stand-up competition — guaranteeing him a prize every time.

Visiting the Edinburgh Fringe? “T-Rex: A Pack of Lies?” is at the Outhouse from August 8-21 while “The Comedy Final” is at the Gilded Balloon Teviot from August 5-31.