Gary Little began performing comedy in 2003, when he became a finalist in a competition run by The Stand comedy club and the Daily Record. He performed his first one-man show at the Glasgow Comedy Festival in 2005.

In 2007, he was briefly jailed for stealing books from the HarperColins warehouse near Glasgow, where he worked as a forklift truck driver, netting £100,000 from selling them cheap on eBay. His prison experiences formed the basis of his 2009 Edinburgh Fringe show He Was Only Jail Gay.

Gary Little at the 2010 Glasgow Comedy Festival
Live Review
Glasgow Stand

Forget the ‘international’ part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival – Gary Little’s show is as Glaswegian as a ned quaffing Buckfast on Sauchiehall Street.

The city’s influence comes through as strong as his unmistakable accent, as he makes wry observations about a place where a brutal stabbing is casually dismissed as ‘a bit of nonsense’.

The sizeable home crowd he attracts – pretty much filling out The Stand – clearly enjoy observations they can identify with, even if the punchlines are often predictable, be they about the working-class Glaswegians hill-walking in shorts and sandals, or about the Commonwealth Games coming to town in which someone is inevitably ‘stabbed with a javelin’.

Little delivers all this with an imposing, superficially amiably presence, with a hint of a more menacing streak, should things turn nasty. I suspect Little doesn’t get too many heckles.

However when he does become agitated, the effect is rather phoney. He rants and raves at the ridiculous hyperbole of someone describing a steak pie as ‘unbelievable, absolutely fantastic’ – but the only unbelievable thing is that such an offhand comment should provoke such passion.

Like so many comedians, he’s better with the personal material, especially his tales of being newly single at 46 and turning to internet dating. Needless to say, the rendezvous don’t always go well – even if he can generate any interest from the female users of the site – and this section does create a more detailed idea of who Gary Little might be. However, does sometimes feel exploitative of the women he did go out with, especially the recently widowed lady, whose genuine depression he treats as an inconvenience to him.

Little is prepared to venture into areas others might shy away from – mentioning, for example, the recent deaths of three asylum-seekers, throwing themselves from a high-rise flat. But the results, like so much of his writing, are very hit and miss.

Having only gone to this show because of another getting cancelled I can only ask if you have something personal against Mr Little? From the start to the end the guy rocked the place and unlike yourself I didn't feel the guy was false. I would also have thought with all the comics you have seen that you would know that they all don't tell the truth! The guy is funny

garryboy@hotmail.co.uk, March 2010

your review that his obervation about an apparant brutal stabbing is actually factually incorrect. It was actually a brutal gangland shooting that was described as a bit of nonsense. For me making mistakes like that kind of makes a mockery of your review of him a bit like someone who never misses an episode of Casualty attempting to critically review a life saving medical operation!

paul, March 2010