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From his DVD Robin Ince Is As Dumb As You

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Robin Ince started his comedy career as a writer, working on shows including Alistair McGowan's Big Impresison, V Graham, Norton and Meet Ricky Gervais, his first of many collaborations with the Extras star.

Ince appeared with Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Jimmy Carr in the 2001 Edinburgh show Rubbernecker, and regularly supports Gervais on tour. He also appeared in one episode of The Office, playing interviewee Stewart Foot.

That role inspired his tongue-in-cheek solo Edinburgh debut in 2004, and he has returned to the Fringe every year since. In 2005 he started erudite comedy night The Book Club, loosely based around bad literature, which won him the innovation award at the 2006 Chortle Awards as well as the outstanding contribution to comedy accolade at that year's Time Out awards. In 2007, he was named best compere at the Chortle Awards.

On TV, he has appeared as John Peel on Channel 4's 11 O'Clock Show as well as countless panel games and 'talking heads' shows, including Channel 4's 100 Greatest Musicals (2003), BBC Three's The State We're In (2003), Celebdaq (2004), BBC Two's Mock The Week (2006). He has also appeared on Radio 4's Now Show, Just A Minute and Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music.

In 2006, he co-wrote his first feature film, Razzle Dazzle, about children's dance contests in Australia.

Uncaged Monkeys: Night Of 200 Billion Stars
Live Review

Is particle physics the new rock and roll?

Well, obviously not... but even a couple of years ago, it would have seemed ridiculous to suggest that a bunch of scientists could fill a mid-sized rock venue, as one of them talked the audience through graphs of the invariant or transverse mass distributions for selected collisions, seeking evidence of particles around the 125GeV mark.

But those charts were fresh off the press – the results from the large hadron collider that provided evidence for the elusive Higgs boson, the so-called God particle. And the member of the CERN Atlas team explaining the significance of the day’s news to the Hammersmith Apollo was none other than science pin-up Brian Cox.

I say ‘explain’... I surely wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand most of the finer details, and I’ve a physics degree (barely used). But Cox is undeniably a great communicator and expertly coveys the excitement and importance of the discovery and even the broad concept of a Higgs condensate, even if the detailed meaning is lost.

A video link-up to his colleagues in Switzerland might have filled in some gaps... but the most complex machine man has ever built has an internet connection stuck in the dial-up age, and the Skype signal kept cracking up.

It’s testament to Cox’s charisma, though, that his explanation of the complexities of the Standard Model filled the audience with more wonder and awe than the more esoteric ideas coming from the mind of comic-book artist Alan Moore, proclaiming his faith in a 2nd century sock puppet snake god and spouting some nonsense about how we’re all cosmic holograms in a rather rambling contribution to the night.

This was all in the second half of this rationalist show, which curator Robin Ince has grown into a pre-Christmas tradition. Tonight was headlined by Tim Minchin, who hotfooted it to Hammersmith direct from recording the Jonathan Ross Show alongside Tom Cruise, and treated the audience to a silly new song about a ‘Woody Allen Jesus’ and his beautifully touching Christmas classic White Wine In The Sun, accompanied by Cox reviving his D:Ream past on keyboard.

Before the interval, mathematician Simon Singh delivered his favourite, if now over-used, set piece debunking those who see hidden messages in the Bible, before demonstrating an actual wartime Engima encoding machine; Guardian science writer Ben Goldacre made a case for evidence-based policymaking, rather than just running on hunches and doctrine; and geneticist Adam Rutherford broke from his field of expertise to introduce an inspiring eight-minute video compilation video of Space Shuttle missions.

‘We’ve become desensitised to wonder,’ he said succinctly – although this often inspiring, if inconsistent, show surely would have served to reignite that flame among many.

As well as the science bits, there came the usual bookish humour from Robin Ince and regular collaborator Josie Long, who read from a fictional version of Charles Darwin’s diaries in which he munched his way through most of his case studies, and a bit of variety from jugglers Feeding The Fish. All that and unlocking the secrets of this universe... what more could you want?

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Saw him a couple of years ago on a whim; cheap tickets, so why not? I could not have been more pleasantly surprised, it was one of the best shows I've seen. Highly recommended.

Jamie McIntyre, July 2011

Tries very hard to be funny. Unfortunately, he just isn't.

Tom, November 2010

Smug tedious hectoring know all. Buy The Guardian and be bored in the comfort of your home rather than waste money to see him. Or wait for one of his many yawn inducing BBC appearances. Probably alongside Marcus Brigstocke, the only man in the world more who's more of a "Student Grant" than this prat.

Robert, December 2009

I watched Robin Ince as part of Josie Long's Underbelly show. For me he was the highlight of the night. Truly engaging, surprising, and funny. His frantic delivery built to a intelligent outburst that really was fantastic. I can't wait to see more.

Jay Cowle, July 2009

Ince is a very Radio 4-friendly, charming, harmless act. Saw the ‘Bleeding Heart Liberal’ show in Tunbridge Wells. This was a ‘show of two halves’. The first half was around 20 minutes of mostly non-amusing observation of what happened to him on the way to the theatre, armed with a notebook. This was filler, as was a musical act featuring a Jacques Brel-inspired front man backed up with guitar, drums and double bass, singing existential songs about a blind man’s dog, uniformed, uninformed idiots and Cupid. Post-interval Ince was better. At the end, he said he’d missed out a lot of the ‘good stuff’, which suggests that he should beef up a weak first half with some of that. His self-awareness and realisation that he is not Eddie Izzard is acute and a little grating, but Ince is good when angrily attacking the media, religious leaders, and hypocrisy. With his ‘highbrow-books-on-a-table’ props and ‘top three’ lists of physicists, Ince is trying perhaps a bit too hard to cut out a persona of the intellectual. Ince repeatedly says 'I am a Marxist' but he fails to explore this and, as such, comes across as the shallow, comfortable, suburban Guardianista par excellence. An adequate two hours entertainment. With a bit more structure, Robin could lift his act from average to good.

Tim Probert, January 2009

Robin is one of Ricky Gervais's best mates which explains how this unfunny so called comedian gets work. It's obviously a case of it's not what you know it's who you know.

vectra owner, January 2009

Terrible comedian, whenever I see him him sat there in silence, he doesn't even get a smile from me from his so called jokes. *Yawn*

Bert Stein, November 2008

Pedantic,childish and a complete waste of a night. Never have so many been so bored by so few.

ted crilly, October 2008

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