Steven Fry performes stand up and recounts personal experiences to coincide with the release of his memoir.Steven Fry performes stand up and recounts personal experiences to coincide with the release of his memoir.Steven Fry performes stand up and recounts personal experiences to coincide with the release of his memoir.
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Stephen Fry: I don't think even the Prince of Wales could name his 8 great grandparents. And if he couldn't, coming from the most famous family in the world, then which of us can? And that's only 3 generations back, and it goes up quickly: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc. - 20 generations back and you're in the millions. And if you can't name your 8 great grandparents - 1 whom may be Jewish, 1 of whom may be Arabic, 1 of whom may be of any race that you can think of under the sun; that may not have shown through as a pigmentation or a facial type - then how can you call yourself anything in terms of identity? Other than a brother or sister of everybody else on the planet. We call ourselves by the last name of only 1 of our great grandparents - leaving 7 other ancestors unnamed. You don't have to go very far back in history before all of us are related. We are all descended, if we have a hint of caucasian blood, from Charlemagne. We have more ancestors from the 15th century, than the entire population of Britain in the 15th century. And if you go back further, we're all related to Genghis Khan. And of course, we're all related to that very few thousands of people who survived the last ice age. None of us would be alive if it weren't for each and every one of them. We must be related.
- ConnectionsReferences The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)
Once he got to the bit about the "Australian heartburn" accent though, it was clear that he was totally on form. There's a charming riff on the mobile library van as the Internet-equivalent of his teenage years, a compelling theory about why dogs are so different from wolves, and who else could read the closing lines of a scholarly biography (Richard Ellmann's of Oscar Wilde) and not leave a dry eye in the house?
His amazing fluency never seems glib; after his initial fidgets, he never loses connection with the audience, except maybe when he lapses into German or, on one occasion, Rumanian. He does a great impression of HRH Prince Charles (Penn Gillette though, not so much). The well polished anecdotes about the Royal Family and QI-style factoids go down pretty smoothly, even if you've already heard them in one form or another.
Another Netflix critic objects that Fry, despite his well known Cambridge credentials, uses "reverence" as a verb. I say that if Mark Twain can do it, then why not Stephen Fry? As far as I'm concerned, he can use "oberaffentittenturbogeil" as a preposition if he wants to.
- The_late_Buddy_Ryan
- Jan 11, 2016
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- Gross worldwide
- $13,940
- Runtime1 hour 34 minutes
- Color