John-Luke Roberts: Stnad-Up @ Voodoo Rooms

Plastic dinosaurs, glasses of water, drawing pads, produce, pants and more bric-a-brac than your gran’s house strewn across the stage welcome the slightly damp audience to John-Luke Roberts’ Stnad-Up. Opening by asking the audience to shout insults at you is a smart tactic to prevent them from doing it on their own initiative; later Roberts proceeds to take the audience on a strange and uncomfortable journey with laughs that are more polite than genuine by the end of the show.

Part of PBH’s Free Fringe, Roberts’ act is very reminiscent of Jimmy Carr in the deadpan delivery and pacing of jokes – both are Cambridge University graduates. The jokes ranged from awkward to sexually uncomfortable to just terrible like jokes dads tell during Sunday lunch. Roberts previously won worst joke at the Edinburgh Festival in 2010 for the zinger "I made a Battenberg where the two colours ran alongside each other. I called it apartheid sponge."

The dreaded audience participation leaves the room slightly tense as Roberts jumps on chairs, shouts at them, and pulls someone on stage for an awkward pants moment and an interpretation of the spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp. There are some genuine laughs in the show and the pace is fast enough that the next joke might get a laugh even if the rest of it doesn’t work. Everyone receives their very own insult from Roberts’ stack of cards to raise their spirits before the next show. The audience isn't quite left with a feeling of never getting that hour of their life back, but it's close.