Tony Law review

This didn't look a guaranteed sure-fire winner, it's probably fair to say. On in a small room at midday, the unsung Law has always been diverting in small doses but one wondered if his wild-eyed flights of fancy and general air of mannered North-American mentalism would work over an hour. Can you really be Tony Law for that long?

As he strides toward the oddly-situated Stand 2 a few minutes before showtime, sporting the regulation Canadian lumberjack shirt, Law does look a bit on the gloomy side but any fears of an awkward lunchtime are swiftly undone. There's a healthy crowd, including a couple of well-known comics, and the be-quiffed comic bounds on with a brilliant visual gag involving para-aramid synthetic fibres. Boom!

If you haven't seen Law before, the fist-pumping "Boom!" and "Ouch!" and mic-in-the-mouth tugboat noises are regular punctuation points as he takes us on a wayward journey through the windmills of his mind. He talks bollocks, basically, but does it with such oddball panache that every word is a wonder.

Much of the show concerns the very fact that he's doing a show at midday in this bijou spot up a stairway opposite a hairdressers, pondering how the pretentious cafe customers downstairs dissed his audience on the way in for spending their lunchtimes in such a place and remembering fondly the Festival's first day when only one person turned up. Then he gives a blast of tugboat to make those cafe patrons wonder what they're missing. Actually, they're missing a treat. An hour of Law, it turns out, is not nearly enough.

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Tony Law: Mr Tony's Brainporium listing