Rich Hall

His native America provides an almost bottomless pit of material. In his firing line are rampant gun ownership; the hostile takeover of Cadbury’s by the culinary vandals at Kraft, and far-right fundamentalist politicians. Possibly easy targets, but he destroys them with simple common sense, absurd extrapolation, pitch-perfect metaphor and poetic language. A phrase such as ‘Moses is your meat thermometer,’ somehow has meaning, when in context.

Neither Britain nor Australia are off the hook, either. A highlight is his routine on the UK’s not entirely unexpected horsemeat scandal. But while lesser comics are content with sub-Twitter equine puns, he fires up yet another blistering diatribe of plain thinking, deliciously put. He is the gourmet, organic meat patty to the 10p-a-burger rivals.

His rants are punctuated with semi-improvised songs, such as the now-familiar tale of poor little Tommy trapped down a well, with only the ingenuity of one front-row punter to save him. Sadly, tonight’s real estate agent searched for the hero inside himself and came up empty-handed  – but still Hall developed his own, rather unlikely, rescue plan based on the chap’s occupation. More crowd-pleasing was a fast-paced musical tribute to Australian towns, somewhat akin in rhythm to Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire.

This grizzled Montanan finds joy in the wide-open spaces of this land; but on humanity he’s getting grumpier as he ages. And funnier with it. Here’s to 20 more years...

Edited 9/3/13 to correct capacity of the Capitol