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A Best Newcomer nominee at the Fringe in 2019, and winner of Taskmaster season 13 in 2022, Sophie Duker has returned to Edinburgh a bit delusional. Or delulu, if you will. How delulu? To a patron, she might decree: “I’d much rather you pissed yourself in your seat than interrupted me while I’m talking.” But not to worry. Delulu is more campy than cray cray.
She wishes she gave off a different vibe, but the vibe she has and the length of her skirt make Duker think she doesn’t need to tell us that her dad left her, thereby requiring her to find a new father from within each night’s audience. She has recently begun attending therapy sessions with her actual dad, although it’s on Zoom and with a curious sort of Italian white man as their therapist. Not quite the old black woman Duker might prefer. Although therapy in itself has given Sophie the revelation that saying anything to a therapist without the threat of real-life consequences is rather “like doing stand-up as a dude.” And we’re not going to be privy to what she and her father have found out about each other in those sessions, either. Why? Duker jokes she’s saving that for Netflix when the price is right. Then she adds: “I’m joking. It’s not Daddy Reindeer.”
How can she take her therapist seriously? Will we take her seriously when a sugar daddy slides into her DMs and she sings about it???
All I know for sure is that when Graham Norton is in attendance at your Fringe show, you’re giving off the right vibes.
Sophie Duker “BUT DADDY I LOVE HER” plays at Pleasance Courtyard during the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe
