Stand-up John Gordillo has recently returned to performance after establishing himself as a comedy director, with credits that include Eddie Izzard’s Unrepeatable and Live At The Ambassadors shows, a stint looking after sketch collective Ealing Live, and any number of Edinburgh shows.

Earlier adopters of digital TV will remember him as the host of BBC Choice’s RDA, a topical show in the vein of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show which ran for an impressive 60 episodes over two series in 2000 and 2001 – but was never renewed when the channel became BBC Three. However, there are still a small handful of internet shrines to the show.

Gordillo started as a stand-up in the mid-Nineties, and returned to the circuit in 2005.

John Gordillo: Fuckonomics - Fringe 2009
Live Review

John Gordillo’s offering this year is a well thought-out analogy of the sexual relationship as economic theory. Using his recent five-year relationship as an example, he takes us through his hypothesis, from the marketplace where you sell yourself using a variety of special offers, but once established in the relationship, there’s an inevitable ‘relationship tax’.

For every shag you receive there’s the necessary chore of having to listen to her continual verbal narrative on the irrelevant points of her day: non-events such as her deciding to catch the bus home then not getting the bus home, it was raining/then it wasn’t. Worst of all for a ‘weak liberal type’ like Gordillo – he also had to live with her 14-year-old daughter who stalks the house like a ‘hormonal Old Testament God’.

Gordillo engagingly works his way through this intelligent show despite the fact that on this particular night, getting a reaction from the audience was like wading through treacle – a fact he was all too acutely aware of.

Given that Gordillo’s theory relies on the fact that he has to suffer characteristics in a girlfriend that he finds unsavoury, to get what he wants out of a relationship, he’s on potentially hack, misogynistic ground. Coupled with a lack of compassion towards the aforementioned teenager, he could appear pretty heartless too.

But Gordillo’s continual self-deprecation makes him an endearing, empathic character rather than moaning male. As well as confessing that he fully acknowledges he is punching above his weight in this particular relationship, he also emphasises his wimpy demeanour - particularly in comparison to his macho, ball-scratching Spanish father.

That and the fact that he neurotically bumbles his way through the hour analysing his relationship in a manner not dissimilar to Woody Allen ensures that you’re with him all the way and serves to render the denouement all the more touching.

Saw him twice in two weeks and there was very little venn in his material! Yes, it's smart-arse stuff and all the better for it. Move over Andy Zaltzman you've got company - and about time to! Definitely an act to trudge through the snow for. House point for Mr Gordillo.

Stephen Hobbs, January 2010

An Anglo with the surname Gordillo? Maybe the Spanish Armada did succeed!

Felix Gordillo, June 2009

John Gordillo is outstanding. I laughed so heartily I felt sick. his material is gorgeously original without any hint of smartypants and he seems a delightful, egoless, insightful man too. refreshing and very thought provoking without being laboured or cliched. Turned a very ropey evening thanks to two weak 'comedians' in to a memorably witty one.

jess levine, March 2009

John is outrageously funny. He is Spanish rather than Anglo in his humour, being rather surreal and having a strange perspective on the world. His experimental discussion of the BNP website was profoundly humorous (not that the sites of the 'mainstream' parties - Public School Bible-thumpers - are not rather odd, too). I have seen John twice now and his material seems inexhaustible - no gags or themes were repeated in either set, and he overran by half an hour on both occasions. As someone said of Coleridge: 'He seemed to talk on forever - and you WANTED him to talk on forever...' Deserves to be famous, though probably a bit radical for most mainstream audiences.

John F Keane, August 2008

Seriously funny geezer. Clever, lucid, sharp-witted, not afraid to tread dodgier ground and risk new stuff. Can't wait to see him again!

Michael Monkhouse, April 2008

Wow what a quality act. Saw John at the Far Side Club, York. He had a very rocky start when just as he walked on music from an adjacent bar spilt into the club clearly throwing him. Then the hecklers started pilling in and it started to look ugly. But then slowly but surely he turned it around with outstanding comedy observations. His mind digs for the surreal and serves up a platter of obtuse comedy nuggets, a very satisfying comedic feast!

David Honan, June 2007

Gordillo...is buddy brilliant. Original, wily, intelligent and barnstormingly funny. His ability to take fresh and uncharted subjects and infuse them with his curious and madcap style make for a refreshing and uplifting comedy experience. Absent of cliche, plagarism or arrogance he lucidly recreates the everyday draped in his own stylish surrelaism. by far, the most talented and amusing circuit comedian, his humble on stage pressence only makes him a more attractive voice. He bounces onto the stage like a distracted professor and unleashes a cannon of material that no normal man could fathom, we witnessed the brave creations born from his laboratory of humour. I challenge anyone to view Gordillo on any night, at any club, at any time and not moisten to the dulcet purrs of his whimsical trumpet. Amazing

Olly Rowse, March 2007

Ace

Steve Day, December 2006