Brand new thoughts, ideas, stories and jokes from award winning, working class, queer comedian, Sian Davies. As seen on Comedy Central Live and Next Up. Nominated for Next Up Biggest Prize in Comedy at Edinburgh Fringe 2023. Winner of Edinburgh Comedy Awards Panel Prize 2022 for Best in Class. Winner Best Debut Show Leicester Comedy Festival 2020. Runner up Funny Women Stage Award 2019. Winner Hilarity Bites best new act 2018. And she doesn't regret a thing. Or does she?

August 25, 2024    The List

Gay marriage was a massive step in LGBTQIA+ equality but Sian Davies isn’t that much of a fan. In fact, she’s a much bigger proponent of gay divorce. The Northerner’s stand-up is an unserious hour where she shows and tells her most regrettable tattoo (a ‘tribal’ symbol, naturally), and shares the story of how a random stranger got a tattoo of Davies and her then wife. Most of her jokes are laced with originality, and only sometimes does her audience seem to not quite get them. Her anecdotal gags are great, and she throws in a few bad puns and dad jokes here and there that are received surprisingly well. Indeed, her gags tell us a lot about herself: gay divorcee haunted by a sleep-paralysis demon of Sylvester The Cat from Looney Tunes.

While not every single joke lands, Davies’ audience is clearly entertained for her full comedy hour with minimal seat shuffling. While her more niche gags get less reaction, her stories are hilarious, and would seem far-fetched if she didn’t have photographic evidence (her face tattooed on the aforementioned stranger). If you’ve got a list of gay and lesbian comedians to see this year, Sian Davies should absolutely be on it. Click Here For Review

August 17, 2024    One4Review

Sian Davies’ Band of Gold is a brilliant new show from the award-winning, working-class queer comedian. This heartfelt and hilarious performance dives into the complexities of love, weddings, and the unexpected turns life takes, particularly when it comes to gay divorce. Davies, with her superb comedy timing, effortlessly blends humour with poignant observations about the pressures of traditional family expectations and the realities of queer relationships.

Her witty storytelling is both relatable and deeply personal, exploring how families react when the wedding bells ring and what happens when the “happily ever after” doesn’t go as planned. Davies doesn’t shy away from the messier aspects of love, making her reflections on divorce both refreshing and authentic. Her unique perspective, underscored by her working-class roots, adds depth to her humour, making the show resonate with a broad audience.

Visually, Davies is as captivating as her comedy, with her tattoos adding an edge to her stage presence, symbolizing the stories and struggles she carries with her. Band of Gold showcases Sian Davies at her best—sharp, insightful, and unapologetically herself. It’s a show that will leave you laughing, thinking, and maybe even rethinking love. Click Here For Review

August 5, 2024    Fest

A drolly delivered hour from an increasingly ambitious storyteller.

How Sian Davies came to find her own face tattooed onto a stranger's midriff is only the most bizarre strand in this patchily linked but drolly delivered hour about where she finds herself in life. Essentially driven by the ongoing fallout of her familial legacy of mental health issues and, more impactfully, her divorce seven years ago, it's fair to say that the break-up still truly impinges on the comic, not least as she grudgingly took custody of the dog after the split. If her love-hate relationship with this canine afford the otherwise dryly cynical Band of Gold its heart, Davies nevertheless amusingly frames it via her suspicions about the dog's political leanings, the antennae of her class consciousness forever twitching. Elsewhere, she muses on body art as a signifier of status and aspirations, but chiefly, youthful folly and regrets, an ever-present link to a past she can't fully put behind her. And why should she? Revelations about the limits of adultery in the eyes of the law seem a staggering injustice and equality loophole that she incredulously dissects for all its worth, while elsewhere she's wryly witty about the limits of middle-class allergy remedies when you live in a deprived inner city. Righteously pugnacious, especially for her socialist ideals, Davies nevertheless has a healthy sense of her own ridiculousness and is an increasingly ambitious storyteller. Click Here For Review

August 5, 2024   iNews

The 33 best shows to see at Edinburgh Fringe 2024

Sian Davies: Band of Gold

She’s the founder of Best in Class, an organisation which brings a cohort of talented working-class comedians to the Fringe every year, but Sian Davies is also a skilled stand-up in her own right. Her third solo show promises an hour of laughs about regrets, inspired by a Northern Soul playlist. Click Here For Article

August 5, 2024    The Arts Desk

The tenth anniversary of Sian Davies’ wedding has just passed – but then so has the seventh anniversary of her divorce. It’s a grabber of an intro, drily delivered and neatly setting up Band of Gold, her latest hour of observational comedy.

Davies looks at her own life to ruminate on the choices we make and the errors of judgement we have to live with. But she’s a positive soul, preferring to own her mistakes, even including the naff tattoo she had on an 18-30 holiday some years ago.

And then there’s the short-lived marriage, about which she’s more waspish. But at least there’s fun to be had, she says, in wondering where her ex-wife is now - until she finds out the location for her former partner's second honeymoon. (The show's title, by the way, is a nod to the song of the same title, often played at weddings but the lyrics of which are anything but loved up, as Davies gleefully points out.)

Along the way Davies talks about her working-class family - some of whom have a fractious relationship with public transport - losing her middle-class in-laws in the divorce, mental health and accidentally becoming a dog owner.

Davies has a great rapport with the audience - and clearly likes guying men of a certain age - and has some smart observations to make about lesbian life, families and relationships.

It’s an entertaining hour and one that ends with a short video which, while cleverly pulling the show’s strands together, means it ends with a fizzle rather than a bang. Click Here For Review