Review by Steve Bennett

James Inman's an angry, aggressive American, full of bluster and fight who demands your attention with the fire in his belly.

Sadly, there's less going on in his head, with dull material that never strays too far from the norm.

He ticks all the boxes any modern club comic must cover in the States: drugs, George Bush, religion, abortion masturbation ­ all present and correct. Big subjects all, but extensively covered by just about every half-decent comic of the last quarter-century. The bottom line is that Inman is expressing few sentiments that you can't hear more eloquently elsewhere.

Political subjects, especially, rarely seem hard-hitting from American comics, and who can blame them when they're informed by a superficial, jingoistic media. Over there, simply calling Bush names is still radical in some quarters, over here it's expected ­ which means a comic have to do a whole lot more to impress. Even if, as Inman justifiably boasts, "I can be very inventive with my name-calling"

Another Stateside habit he brought to this, admittedly his first British gig, was to ask: "Let's have a round of applause for all the beautiful ladies here." Nice sentiment, but we just don't do that here.

His noisy delivery gets the laughs, if more from the devastatingly effective rhythm rather than any inherent quality of the material. He has got a gift for extreme exaggeration, it has to be admitted, and his anger can make some of them horrifically funny, but only some.

The impassioned conviction with which he speaks does the job of harvesting laughs, and does it effectively. If only the material was of more consequence.

Review date: 1 Jan 2004
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett