Review by Steve Bennett

To call Martin Bigpig Mor’s Glasgow comedy festival offering a ‘show’ would be a generous application of the word. This isn’t a performance of carefully selected, well rehearsed material, but rather a bloke just having a chat. The effect is akin to an hour of skilful compering, with warm, breezy banter interspersed with a few amicable anecdotes. The upshot is a good-natured experience guaranteed to cheer you up, even if there’s little substance, and certainly no structure, to it.

But there’s no doubting that his low-key approach is appropriate. Audience numbers are relatively modes tonight, so most of us feature in the night’s unfolding conversation at least once,. The house lights are kept on, too, further eroding the distinction between performer and observer.

Bigpig pitches the banter just right; affably joshing with the tipsily chatty Hebredeans, the sour-faced pharmacists and the jocular older man with affection, charm and authority. He asks leading questions setting up material – of course – but is also happy to roll with whatever happens, always quick to add something entertaining to whatever topic might arise. ‘Is there anything you want to talk about?,’ he asks more than once, adding to the feel this is more a dialogue than a monologue.

The Northern Irish-born comic certainly cuts a distinctively unconventional figure on stage, with bushy beard and sizeable tattoo collection – but aside from a bit of friskily sexual material about intimate swabs and dodgy strip clubs, there’s nothing in his patter to scare the conformists.

The discussion takes in snowball fights, the upkeep of his facial hair, or the inappropriateness of Ice-T’s gangsta patter to an Edinburgh crowd. There are no jokes so brilliant you’ll be wanting to tell them later, but the hour is so good humoured and delivered in such jocular manner that it flies by in an undemandingly enjoyable way.

Review date: 17 Mar 2010
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Glasgow Universal