Show Rating:

Chris Corcoran made a rod for his own back when, in his warm-up banter, he engaged a girl of about seven in conversation. Loving the attention, she continued to interject throughout the hour, stealing the show and keeping the newish comic from his material.

Actually, that might have been no bad thing, given how slight what he did deliver was. For Corcoran's a friendly act, happier chatting aimlessly but amiably with the audience than offering us rock-solid punchlines.

So he spent most of the time simply playing around: offering out Welsh cakes, getting us to sing along to Tom Jones, do Mexican waves, make game-show 'oooh' sounds or fooling the reverb button to give his voice a silly sound. No wonder the seven-year-old got involved, it had all the hallmarks of a children's party.

Apart from the lack of material ­ save for a well-deserved rant against Sian Lloyd - the other fatal flaw in Corcoran's show is that simply being Welsh isn't as intrinsically interesting as he thinks it is.

Being from somewhere is a very thin basis for an hour, especially when the result is no more than a series of weak observations about broad national traits such as a love of singing, beer and rugby. The only time this went any deeper than the superficial was in his impersonation of the RFC committee man dogged in his insistence that each his team take to the pitch.

Corcoran has an unfazably jaunty manner to him, but, on the basis of this slight offering, little more. That talent will surely stand him in good stead as a circuit compere, but an Edinburgh show really demands more meat.