Show Rating:

Will someone please catch on and make this man famous?

Stephen Grant, after ten years at the comedy coalface, maintains the the demeanour of a super bright sixth former. He has bundles of energy, wonderfully controlled.

The show starts with a live computer screen where the audience receive the kind instructions you'd normally expect from a compere. This focuses the room and creats an alert and attentive audience.

Grant is posing the questions and making the on screen commentary and it's interesting that his personality shines through the plain type. (Makes you think he'd be fine if, God forbid, he ever ended up with a blink operated communication screen.)

There's no fat or padding in Grant's comedy. He's famously pedantic, relentlessly logical and with the kind of comedy vision that can see round corners.

He covers the gamut of subjects from prejudice, abuse and confrontation to personal frustrations, from Asda's lack of sun-dried tomatoes to missing a top job, his possible inventions, including a wonderful breathalyser phone so you don't drink and dial, which could probably get public funding if enough people see this show and then there's his caustic apprasial of the media and its creation of urban myths.

He is so conscientious, you're never more than 15 seconds from a really good laugh, even when he's addressing the big ideas - guilt, karma and platonic notions of goodness. This is wide ranging, personal and exhilarating comedy of the kind you never see in a club.

He's practically a Renaissance man of comedy - don't miss it.

Reviewed by: Julian Chambers