Written and performed by: Ben Bailey and Chris Parkinson
Since 2021, Ben Bailey and Chris Parkinson have been bringing their delightfully nerdy PowerPoint presentations to the Brighton Fringe. There are two self-imposed rules to The Slide Show Must Go On: one, every night in the run is different; and two, no one is told beforehand what the shows will be about. As evidenced by the packed Rose Hill audience, it’s a winning formula and the combination of well-researched niche topics and visually-cued humour doesn’t disappoint.
The evening begins with two shorter presentations. Parkinson delves into moral panics, from Socrates publicly stating that reading and writing will corrupt the youth to Lady Chatterley’s Lover to jazz, violent computer games and even photocopying. He shows us in a fast-paced stand-up comedian-like patter how people just love to ban things. It’s a tantalising intro packed full of guffaw-inducing facts, a perfect balance of japery and stats to let us know we’re in safe hands for the night. The resounding message at the end that “there ain’t nothing moral about a moral panic” underlines that an outright ban very rarely reflects the nuances of any debate.
Bailey then steps up to deliver “The Writing On The Fucking Wall”, a scroll through his collection of images of things people have written on the walls. These range from badly spelt epithets on toilet walls to whole pinned-up covid disinformation creeds. Often the original messages blossom out into conversations between strangers as ridiculous claim meets witty comeback. Bailey displays a robust pedantry, pointing out a dazzling array of spelling and grammatical mistakes. It’s a neat little window onto a very analogue kind of anonymous public dialogue, refreshingly separate from online discourse.
After a leisurely interval, Bailey is back with a longer-form presentation entitled “Why do you care about the Titanic?” which explores the history of our collective obsession with the doomed ocean liner. The story is told with intensive scrutiny and acts as a rounding-up of all the information available on the internet on the Titanic and the individuals and communities around the world who have become morbidly fixated on a tragedy that killed around 1500 people. Bailey debunks the myths and conspiracy theories around the sinking, pointing out the logical fallacies involved. It’s a rigorous very deep dive (pun very much intended) into a particular type of tragedy that’s just right for narrativising and romanticising.
The final presentation of the night is Parkinson’s “Further Eating Habits Of Politicians” which is the follow-up to a previous year’s slide show and chronicles the last five or so years of British politics through the medium of culinary predilections. We’re taken on a journey back to lockdown times when Boris claimed he was ambushed by a cake and the nation pondered whether a Scotch egg counted as a main meal, through to Kemi Badenoch’s strangely strong feelings about sandwiches. It’s a Tory-bashing romp through the British political landscape that elicits much jollity in the partisan audience.
Reviewed on 18 May 2025
