Jake Roche: Neporrhoids ★★★★★

The thorny subject of “nepo babies” has offered so much fuel for social media and the tabloids in recent years. Defined as a child of a famous or successful parent, whose own success is believed to be due to their family connections, for every Liza Minnelli, there’s a Brooklyn Beckham; for every Michael Douglas, there’s a Barney Walsh.

It’s a label which Jake Roche is railing against in his new one-man show, Neporrhoids! The son of Loose Women panellist and singer Coleen Nolan and TV presenter and comedian Shane Richie, Jake found his own spotlight as lead singer of Rixton, a band whose single “Me and My Broken Heart” topped the UK charts. But as the subtitle on the poster (“from Universal Music to universal credit”) indicates, fame was to be a fickle thing…

For review sites who like to twist the knife, the potential for sneer with this one is irresistible. A one-hit wonder. Son of a Loose Woman and Alfie Moon! And someone who gave every impression of being a cocky little shit. The Recs is not one of those sites, but we went in with expectations lower than Rixton’s debut album’s chart position. But if you’re expecting a bleat-a-thon, you will have to leave your preconceptions at the door.

From the off, Roche constantly confounds your expectations, playfully wrong-footing you at every turn, in a show that blends inconceivably catchy songs, slick beats and impressive theatricality. Using perfectly-timed interaction with a voice over that is sometimes an exposition device, sometimes his scary (former) American manager, he sings No One Wants To Hear My Story with surprising self-effacement.

His all-too-familiar tale of showbiz rise and fall is told with such brio and invention, it feels fresh and interesting. His comic timing is exemplary. He is laugh-out-loud hilarious about his ex-girlfriend; one quarter of the world’s biggest girl group at the time, he can’t mention her name as it’s in the DNA…oops, I meant the NDA of course…

Jake’s complicated relationship with his father is unpacked as a through line of the show. Presented in an unusual style, it effectively combines pathos, awkwardness and humour without ever reverting to cliché.

Although he has worked with Complicité adapter and dramaturg Laurence Cook and Edinburgh Comedy award-winning Jordan Brooks creating Neporrhoids, the triumph is Jake Roche’s alone. You will leave the show seeing him in a new light. He can sing. Really sing. He can dance. He can perform – like a dream. He is funny and charming. As he asks his father in the show “why do I have a cardboard cutout of you, I take walking round a fucking courtyard?” Why indeed?

In the UK, we are rather too keen and too delighted to write people off. If the motivation of Jake Roche: Neporrhoids was to reset his public perception, remind people of his talent and set out his stall for bigger things to come….mission accomplished!