Show Rating:

Jovial Irish gent Neil Delamere banters effortlessly with tardy members of his audience as they take their seats. He is obviously comfortable with interaction, focusing as he does on a poor couple in the front row that soak up a whole heap of abuse with a very good and surprisingly patient nature.

Delamere is a storyteller, full of anecdotes about his travels and experiences, from his banning from Ryanair to his logistical nightmare of making love to a 6f tall woman.

All of this stories are filled with mischief and the cheeky smugness of being caught doing something naughty. He has a geniality that warms the audience even when he pushes their taste boundaries with particularly graphic imagery, involving Icelandic geysers or some healthy blaspheming pointing out that Jesus is, in fact, a bastard.

Some of his material contrived, with complicated set-ups leading to mediocre punchlines, these obvious fabrications or downright fictions are told as fact, which takes some of the impact away from the stories that may well have a grain of truth to them.

He is rewarded with a groan for a particularly poor bulimia joke that I am amazed he has included in his set and not left it in the viral email or playground where he must have heard it.

And yet even with the weakest puns he still manages to charm and endear the audience with a set that may not be perfect but is a pleasant way to spend an hour.

Reviewed by: Corry Shaw