Stephen Fry Live: More Fool Me

Before watching More Fool Me I thought it was going to be a stand-up comedy so my mind was prepared for that. It's not what I got as it's more a book promotion than anything else. So not much comedy here, even though there are a couple funny passages, but it's always pleasant to hear Stephen Fry talk. He masters the English language (and some others) like nobody else and has interesting views on many topics so it is interesting to listen to him. His speech made me think about some essential things of life so for that alone it's worth a watch. Stephen Fry is an interesting person, one that stands out of the masses and that makes this speech not a complete waste of time but a speech where you could learn a thing or two, and learning a thing is always a bonus.

This guy is so full of horse manure that I'd like to throw him down a flight of steep stairs. He's made a career of being a devout atheist, yet he tells a story here in which Prince Charles and his idiot wife are like deities who condescend to visit his humble home. He slobbers over the mere thought of Princess Diana (the dead one) as if she were a goddess. Very disappointing to this atheist and republican who doesn't believe in the power of the church or monarchy.

There was absolutely nothing even approaching humor in this; it was basically a canned speech for a book tour of a memoir I wouldn't read on a bet.

A commenter on netflix.com (who only watched the first 10′) suggests that Fry may be edging into his "fat Elvis" phase with this one, but I submit that even during his fat phase Elvis could still belt out "Suspicious Minds" with the best of them. And yes, this is basically a 1½ hour improv'd infomercial, and Fry does seem a little fidgety at first.

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.

Like Hitch, Fry is a reformed Marxist. He is smart enough and verbose enough to know there is something wrong. But he is not certain enough he should go too far from the governmental orthodoxy. He is pleasant. He is a good story teller. And I very much liked the far milder aggressive stance compared with Hitch. Still, that means the more entertaining moments from Hitch's discourse are simply not there.