There aren’t many dead comedians without a fringe play about them – and now it’s Frank Carson’s turn.

However, it’s not really a play. If I Didn't Laugh I'd Cry: The Frank Carson Story may, putatively, be set as the Northern Irish comic recovers in hospital from a heart attack in his 50s, but any pretence of a theatrical piece is soon abandoned in terms of a straight-up tribute act.

Perhaps that’s no surprise as Carson himself was a closed book, never the soul-baring type. Every interview he gave was a barrage of gags – as indeed was every encounter in real life, by all accounts, prompting Spike Milligan to quip that the difference between Frank Carson and the M1 is that you ‘can turn off the M1’.

Also, I say ‘now’ it’s Frank Carson’s turn for a play, but Mike McCabe – who knew and worked with the man - first performed a version of this show at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe. Although it’s been tweaked a bit, the show at Brighton – and returning to the Scottish festival this August – has not changed all that much. If anything the biographical element has been downplayed more.

 And of course the gags are pretty much as they were when Carson told them, right up to his death in 2012 at the age of 85. They are set in that familiar 1970s landscape of national stereotypes, mothers-in-law and loveless marriages.  Plenty of them are funny – if of their time – but the main issue is that McCabe’s older audience will sure have heard them all before. But maybe they don’t care if they can fill in most the punchlines before he gets to them, as the warm reaction suggests.

At one point McCabe urges us to chant along with ‘You can’t get the joke if you’re woke’, though there’s some reluctance to join in with that rather bitter sentiment in right-on Brighton. And even if Carson believed that (he became a UKIP supporter in later years), this notion comes out of nowhere here. In any case the gags McCabe has chosen are not offensive, they’re just tired because they’re 60, 70 years old.

With Carson, of course, it always was ‘the way I tell ’em’ – and McCabe mostly does a decent job, even if it’s not the most faithful of impersonations.  That said, he does mangle some lines, too. ‘I had a heart transplant the Other day,’ he says. ‘Now every time I fart the garage doors open.’ No! Not a transplant! It has to be a pacemaker for the joke to work..

McCabe – the father of Troy Hawke creator Milo – also offers impersonations of some Other acts from 1970s ITV show The Comedians – a great Ken Goodwin, for those who can remember him, and a so-so Bernard Manning and Stan Boardman

Very occasionally acknowledging the allegedly theatrical nature of the show, McCabe’s Carson addresses some of the show to his sister, who died young, but it’s only the most cursory link between more punchlines. 

The late comic’s time as a British Army paratrooper is also fleetingly addressed, but if his shooting a terrorist dead, and being shot himself, was a formative experience, it’s not one the show dwells on, as indeed Carson himself never did. A brief childhood encounter with Laurel and Hardy on the steps of the Belfast Opera House seems to have had more effect on his life. Likewise the fact he could play to both Protestant and Catholic audiences says something, but here just an excuse for some religion-based gags.

McCabe does a chunk ‘as himself’, too, though you’d need to be very astute to spot much difference with the Carson segments. It might be churlish to complain that a tribute show is dated, but we also get a Frank Spencer impersonation – in 2026! – apropos of nothing. And it’s a pretty ropey impersonation too. 

A picture of Clive Anderson pops up at one point as he mentions an appearance on his chat show – so he wasn’t entirely shunned by the alternative comedy brigade. This triggers a gag about Anderson being a doctor – even though he was famously a lawyer.

It’s sloppy in technical ways, too, at the climax McCabe gets us to sing Carson’s novelty single It’s A Cracker – with his rendition fighting a recording that’s about 30 seconds out of sync with the man on stage.

Laxity aside, the overwhelming impression is that if Carson’s act was indeed  ‘a cracker!’, this version has gone stale.

• If I Didn't Laugh I'd Cry: The Frank Carson Story is heading to Le Monde at the Edinburgh Fringe this August as simply The Frank Carson Story