Tiernan Douieb vs The World

It's worth mentioning that Tiernan Douieb has a dose of Fringe Flu and this seems to drain the energy from his performance. A high-tempo delivery would help sell this show; today's laid-back gig sadly highlights all of the weaknesses in his material.

Opening with twenty minutes of fairly ordinary observational comedy about things including his recent holiday, Douieb doesn't quite warm up the crowd enough before launching into a quite passionate and intelligent State Of The Nation address. Like a lot of other comics, he's found himself disturbed by current affairs, realised he speaks to people for a living and wants to start saying something important. In terms of importance, he succeeds. There's a unique humanity to his observations, culminating in a deeply moving story about meeting an unemployed Oxford graduate on a train.

Unfortunately, he hasn't quite figured out how to make all of this funny. Many jokes feel tacked on, or see him running to his comfort zone of hipster TV references, like comparing the coalition government to Voltron. This shouldn't be seen as a failure as such, but rather the efforts of a comic who needs a bit more time to develop his new persona. Douieb is not there yet, but definitely moving in the right direction.