Alan Davies: Think Ahead review – comedian addresses his childhood abuse in return to stage

Orchard at Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh

Performing standup after a decade away, Davies rawly discusses his abuse by his father and delivers big laughs with other material

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t’s been 10 years since Alan Davies’s last standup show, since when, he says, he has had a third child, and surpassed – by distressing margins – the ages of lance corporal Jones in Dad’s Army and “the mad old git in Back to the Future”. Another significant development was his 2020 book revealing the story of his childhood sexual abuse by his father. In his new show, Think Ahead, Davies addresses that on stage – and demonstrates, with reference to his laboured breathing, that he is experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder while doing so.

That can’t be anything other than a compelling stage moment, to see a “people-pleasing comedian” (his words) of 30 years’ standing open up – and so rawly – about a difficult subject unaddressed in his comedy until now. Davies does so with honesty and a lightness of touch. He acknowledges that it’s an awkward topic for mirth, and makes good choices about when to set the jokes aside and when to find the funny. The funny? This was a dad who made colour copies of his child sexual abuse images on the household printer (“How many trips to Rymans?!”) and whose diary, when unearthed by Davies years later, focused exclusively on golf.