Cate Simpson

Delivering character and sketch comedy with a distinctly Glaswegian accent, Limmy has built himself a considerable following with his World of Glasgow podcasts, and followers are packed into every corner of Stand II to see his first live shows.

But Limmy’s Fringe debut is somewhat hit and miss. His portrait of a self-loathing gay man who is only interested in straight men involves a lot of crowd-pleasing limp-wristedness, but it’s hard to tell what is actually supposed to be funny about this scenario. The same goes for the video sketches that punctuate the show, from a film about a man who finds himself uncomfortably drawn to his dog’s hanging appendages, to a chap being repeatedly hit on the head by a door. These are cheap laughs, but he has a perfectly willing audience.

Where Limmy does shine is in creating occasionally believable characters: a man argues with his wife after hiring their child to a money lender while a chav imagines the social hierarchy that might exist if his kitchen utensils came alive. These surreal situations with familiar faces are the high points of his set and are better timed than the videos, which simply assault us with a single overplayed joke.

(Original article)

BBC6 radio host Jon Richardson is clearly at home behind a microphone. Charming and self-effacing, he moves through a show that might have been subtitled "OCD, Or How Other People Drive Me Insane," segueing effortlessly between the different elements of his set. There’s a good crowd in attendance who laugh appreciatively at stories about being stuck behind a technologically impaired man at a ticket machine, and living with other people who don’t share his standards of domestic order.

The set is mainly concerned with such every day irritations. A story premised on the different ways to eat a sandwich might have fallen completely flat in less capable hands, but here, it’s delightfully surreal. Richardson offers up our own neuroses and shows how they might be taken to extremes, the result is a kind of madness not unimaginably far from real life. What doesn’t always work is Richardson’s audience interaction. This doesn’t offer anything particularly funny, and he is only occasionally quick enough to work with our comments. However, these conversations are brief, and although they don’t add much to our enjoyment, nor do they detract from an otherwise high quality show.

(Original article)

Stanley’s theme of embarrassment attempts to hold together this jumbled set, with no transition between gags about his parents and standard jokes about Harry Potter and the War on Terror. His finale is a re-enactment of the show’s best visual humour, which only reminds us that if these bits had been funny enough to repeat a second time, he wouldn’t actually have to

(Original article)