Rob Deb vs Army Of Dorkness – Fringe 2009
Live Review

Like most Fringe shows, Rob Deb's is an hour long (I know. I looked at my watch several times). Yet it feels so much longer.

Demonstrating the sort of innovation that's to be expected from a man who thinks 'repli-cunts'  constitutes a decent Blade Runner gag, his fourth Edinburgh outing sees him talking villains, cyborgs, zombies and psychos. An entirely different kettle of fish then, from previous show Heroquest, in which Deb discussed: ‘Elves, dwarves, cyborgs and psychos.’

But it's not his predictable personal hobbyhorses that are the problem, nor him being a button-badge wearing, sci-fi loser - after all, Andrew O'Neill exploits his left-field idiosyncracies with success. Deb just isn't very funny and, worse, is too smug to make any real effort to remedy the situation.

The majority of his material isn't really material, it's just him rambling on about his interests as if he's doing a show-and-tell at one of his beloved sci-fi conventions: tedious lists of the merits or flaws of various comic book creations, punctuated by such incisive observation as: ‘My mate used to work at Forbidden Planet before it was a toy shop...’ 

Such is the number of niche references and fan forum gibberish, he boasts he has to hold a Q&A at the end of all his shows, as a sort of glossary. It's hard to imagine anyone sticking around for that, but apparently there are a few of them, desperate to know things like, why oh why Deb didn't include a joke on Blake's 7.

There is the odd glimmer of potential here, such as a segment likening the Top Gear presenters to the Masters of the Universe (what most of us just knew as He-Man), with Clarkson as Skeletor, but it's not been given much thought beyond the original idea.

For the main part, this set is just repetitive, brain-numbing tedium. A zombie attack would be a welcome relief.

I can't believe how negative this review was. Deb's by no means one of the greats, but his set is by and large very funny, and though, as the reviewer states, the odd gag is lazy, many are well crafted and made me (and my non-geek friend!) laugh hard.

Steve Jones, September 2009