Richard Gadd: Cheese and Crack Whores @ Blackfriars Basement, Glasgow International Comedy Festival

Richard Gadd is clearly having a bad time. So bad, in fact, that it's debatable which would be better - to review him, or refer him to the Samaritans. This is a deliciously weird hour, from the moment you walk in and clap eyes on a hunched over man in a bogging white t-shirt, seedily lit by an Amsterdam-red spotlight, quite visibly having some sort of breakdown in the corner. Cheese and Crack Whores - which actually has nothing to do with either - gives a new level of painful visual clarity to ‘suffering’ for one’s art.

Despite the deliberately shambolic countenance of Gadd, and the show's DIY spirit, the production values are high. It’s not squeaky clean, but that’d never work for a show as deliberately backwards and oddly quixotic as this. The hour is a scrapbook of video logs, artfully bad jokes, Pat Rafter, sight gags and squeal-inducing performance art. When you laugh here, you laugh hard – though that won’t be the only response you’ll find involuntarily bursting from your mouth.

To even begin to touch on the jokes here would be doing this expertly-crafted hour a massive disservice. This show is a jack-in-the-box - an hour that absolutely hinges on subverting expectations and careening off on tangents so wild they actually work.

It’s scalene, shocking and massively unpredictable. To think this show was embryonic in the back room of a wee Edinburgh pub, hiding in amongst the masses, is testament to the level of talent and creativity at the Free Fringe. Cheese and Crackwhores is the absolute highlight of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival - Richard Gadd is doing it right, and deserves a much bigger stage than this. He’s back in town this August, make sure you see him.