Ted Hill PowerPoinDexter - Studio 5 Assembly George Square Gardens - Review

PowerPoints. You hear that one word and suddenly you’re flooded with flashbacks of your school days, work meetings and even that dreaded ‘next slide please’ from the Covid days. But this is PowerPoints like you’ve never seen them before, used not to feed us data and information but instead used in the most creative of fashions to make us laugh.

This is PowerPoinDexter, the new show from PowerPoint comedian Ted Hill fresh from his golden buzzer on Britain’s Got Talent. He reached the finals, finishing 7th after losing out to a dog, something he is not at all bitter about and only mentions a few times. The show begins with comments and news coverage questioning how PowerPoints could possibly be funny, only for Hill to appear and prove that they can be very funny indeed. Using sound and visual effects, meme style content and screenshots, Hill is able to put together a show that earns many a laugh, all whilst inviting his audience to tell him whether it’s too weird or not weird enough using voting cards.

The centre of the show revolves around the idea that upon being told that being a PowerPoint comedian is weird, Hill decides to try out some different types of comedy including ventriloquism, improv and stand up. These sections can feel a little rushed, and perhaps a little forced but that could be because he’s trying to be different from his norm, pushing himself out of his comfort zone, which I give him credit for greatly as a fellow autistic.

He gives it his all here at trying new things and the audience lap it up but Hill truly shines when he is being his self. Through introducing himself, he compares those on the autistic (himself included) to shy water voles and moans about the American mink threatening them, giving an audience member an arcade style gun to shoot at the screen when a mink appears. He uses a soundboard to help him out with his struggles with social interaction and small talk, a section which became the highlight at the show I attended where he found himself chatting to a couple who had come to his show as their very first date.

With all the technology that Hill uses throughout PowerPoinDexter, it is the most simple of things that earn the biggest laughs. He stumbles over his laptop buttons, pressing the wrong ones with hilarious results, whether he does it on purpose or not who can be sure and earns rapturous giggles with a recurring joke about dictionary.com only giving you the third most common definition if you don’t subscribe. In these moments it feels that he is being himself, celebrating his own weirdness and that is what really wins the audience over.

Ted Hill PowerPoinDexter reinvents the everyday PowerPoint presentation, giving it a new life beyond the normal, with brilliantly funny results. Hill presents himself as an open, honest and intelligent comedian, using what he knows best to raise the laughter.