Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Bob Koomen has the spaced-out vibe of a stoned and/or drunk person approaching you at a party, super eager to tell you about all their brilliant business ideas for curing the world's woes. To English ears, his Dutch accent only adds to that feeling that he’s at an angle to the rest of us.

It’s an impression he’s happy to embrace, as he protests that people underestimate his ingenuity when it comes to all the great ideas he has.

Otherwise, much of his set is about wasting time – which is plentiful as he has no real job – and suits his persona as  an oddball who can happily zone out of life.  He’d probably be a conspiracy theorist, too, if only he could be bothered. ‘I've got my doubts about reality,’ he says at one point, reluctant to buy into what society tells him.

All those unfilled hours give him the time to go down bizarre rabbit holes, such as thinking how weird it is, the way the human body works. 

So it’s entirely on brand that he went to Madagascar to take a psychotropic drug to find himself. But his account of the trip – in both senses – is dominated by an amusingly long negotiation he got embroiled in with his driver.

That’s typical of his off-kilter approach. A routine about getting annoyed when someone presses the pedestrian crossing button you've already activated is a common starting point, but the way he ends it portrays him as something of a weirdo.

The feeling’s mutual, as he finds everything odd, too, but he tries to hold it all together. Occasionally he breaks off his monologues to share moments of zen accompanied by the meditative percussion of a handpan – trying, not entirely convincingly,  to come across as poignant and thoughtful. 

Ultimately, his show is about human connections and his struggles to make them. The specifics might be peculiar to him, but the wider idea is universal.

However, it’s also an apt theme as he doesn’t make a consistent connection with the audience, either. Koomen has some wonderfully offbeat lines and ideas. But the persona doesn’t cohere into the sort of all-encompassing weird persona of influences such as  Emo Phillips, Milton Jones or Steven Wright, for whom almost every line is a highly-buffe gem.

Review date: 10 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Just The Tonic at The Hive