FestBuzz have awarded Chris Cox, the comedy mentalist magician, the first ever comedy Twitter of the Year Award at Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of the Fringe.

Cox has been given this prize for his creative and prolific use of Twitter which has helped garner him almost 3,000 followers on the site, and ensured his popularity at this year’s Fringe festival with his show Mind Over Patter. He has tweeted around 300 times this August, conversing with fans and fellow comedians about comedy, the internet and his show. Chris’ online name is @bigcox, and his mind-reading and magic show combines other new social media such as Facebook to create some excellent tricks for his audience.

Fes­t­Buzz is a new way to find cool stuff at the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­vals. It’s a project from Affect Labs, a data pro­cess­ing com­pany based in Edin­burgh, and is sup­ported by Chan­nel 4’s 4iP fund. FestBuzz aggregates “tweets” about shows and then uses sentiment detection to create a star rating for the act: reviews are crowd-sourced directly from the people who are seeing the shows, rather than critics.

Twitter has become an internet sensation in the last 8 months: functioning a little like Facebook status updates, you simply tell the site what you’re doing (in 140 characters or less) and then read what other people are doing from their “tweets”. The attraction of Twitter is following other interesting or famous people’s tweets about their lives, creating a stream of consciousness type feed which illustrates the changing mood of the moment.

The prize will be presented to Chris Cox at Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of the Fringe show starting at 1pm on Thursday 27th August. Stutter has been running the revue since 1992 and will be presenting his own Spirit of the Fringe awards on Sunday 30th August.

http://www.festbuzz.com/

Who: Chris Cox
Where: Pleasance King Dome
When: 8.30pm, Wed 12 Aug — Mon 31 Aug
How Much: £8-£9.50

In 140 characters or less: “Chris Cox has plenty up his sleeves in this confident & rather sweet magic show. Mind reading, technological trickery & good laughs abound.”

Chris Cox is a slight, geeky looking boy who is so sincere when he admits to spending much of his youth in his bedroom with a Paul Daniels’ magic set that it’s almost impossible to doubt him. However, he’s remarkably at home on stage and the audience instantly warm to him. It seems his reputation as a regular Radio 1 guest goes before him, though it’s not immediately obvious how magic can work on radio, the least visual of mediums.

Cox’s main “trick” is mind-reading, though he repeatedly makes the disclaimer that he can’t read minds. Derren Brown is an obviosu comparison, though the truth is that Brown’s patter about psychology etc. is as much a part of his distraction techniques as his jokes, so I’m on my guard already as Cox starts referencing psychologists and sociologists like Stanley Milgram.

Watching a magician with a critical eye is much like watching a comedian in the same manner: you’re waiting to see which way they are directing you in order to work out where the surprise/punchline/magic will actually be. And like watching a comedian, this critical appraisal can ruin the humour by taking the fun out of it. However, it’s good fun trying to work out how Cox’s tricks work as he seemingly bumbles through them. There’s lots of distraction elements, some good jokes, audience participation, lots of puns on the magician’s surname and some creative set-ups. By using Facebook, iTunes and his laptop Cox presents a very modern interpretation of the ancient arcane arts.

I confess, however, that I had a pretty good idea how Chris did every single one of his tricks and I do think some of the earlier stunts in the show needed a little more work on timing so the cracks in their facade aren’t quite so apparent. However, most of the patter was slick, and his charisma carried the audience along nicely. He deserved the gasps of awe he got, though he also deserved a few groans for some of the puns. A great night out!

Festbuzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich