Event Review: Talking Bollocks

The Stand is an iconic comedy club in Edinburgh, so surely not at all intimidating for our academics-turned-standup comedians for the night. When I arrived, it was already standing room only, so I found myself a spot in a dark corner and got ready to watch, laugh and learn.

The show was a part of a wider programme of events called The Provocateurs. A series of shows where academics at the top of their field blend their thought-provoking research with some jokes to create twenty minutes of stand-up comedy, hosted by a full-time comedian: Susan Morrison.

We heard from three academics: Dr Kirsty Pringle talked about air pollution in her show called 'Smokey Skies' and Dr Bryony Buck discussed hearing loss in her set called 'Disrupted Conversations'. In the final act of the evening, we heard from Professor Rod Mitchell who was 'Talking Bollocks'. We, the audience, took on the role of guinea pigs, as this was an Edinburgh Fringe preview show, giving the academics a chance to practice their sets.

Professor Mitchell is a researcher and paediatric endocrinologist from the University of Edinburgh, investigating ways to preserve fertility in male childhood cancer patients whose cancer treatment might cause them to lose their fertility. But on this Tuesday evening, he found himself talking all things testicles.

As Professor Mitchell began his set, it became clear that the main focus of his show was going to be about male fertility, sperm and testes, rather than infertility after cancer treatment. This was a good choice as I think the audience was very much on board with testes and sperm jokes, but would probably have struggled with finding infertility funny. Professor Mitchell challenged himself to not say the word testicle for the whole set, and instead used slang words, inviting the audience to shout them out. This was an enlightening experience for me – I learnt a lot of new words!

On the note of learning, Professor Mitchell had some golden nuggets of information that I and the rest of the audience can take away and surprise people with. My favourite being: men produce approximately two thousand sperm every heartbeat.

Another story was woven through Professor Mitchell's set: Rhys's story. Rhys had chemotherapy as a child, which caused him to become infertile. He was too young to produce a sperm sample for freezing before his chemotherapy, so pieces of his testicular tissue were frozen instead. These were later transplanted back into the testis when he was an adult.

The pieces of tissue matured and started producing sperm, which were extracted and used in IVF, resulting in baby Grady! This received a collective 'wow' from the audience, before the twist that Rhys and Grady are – spoiler alert – monkeys. However, this technique has been approved for clinical trials in humans, including in Edinburgh, and the first one has been performed in Europe. This is Professor Mitchell's provocative idea. I'm unsure whether it is provocative or not, but it certainly is a huge milestone in fertility preservation for boys. Hopefully, more children who require chemotherapy will have the option to have children of their own when they grow up.

As Professor Mitchell's set was coming to a close, someone was chosen from the audience, the lights went down, and the dulcet tones of David Attenborough rang out through the room. I won't spoil the ending of the show for any future visitors since there are still two more shows to go in August, but the ending really is the 'crown jewels' of the whole routine!

Overall, Talking Bollocks was a fun twenty minutes, most of which I spent laughing. The set was well-pitched and understandable for all the non-academics in the audience, while also being educational and thought-provoking. I think everyone took something away that they hadn't known before the evening. It was genuinely funny, with lots of jokes and laughs. I think Professor Mitchell's subject matter made his job all the easier: testicles are great fodder for funny.