‘Every review I read about me always seems to say the same thing. They always go: “He’s good, if you like that sort of thing,” says rising stand up David O’Doherty to a loud laugh from a full OFS Studio. Which is a bit odd, as Irishman O’Doherty is really yet to find what his “sort of thing” is.
As he admits at the outset, the show is lots of bits, thrown together in a haphazard manner. As a result there’s no flow, no theme to speak of and no central question holding the show together. O’Doherty jumps from style to style, there are Tim Minchinesque songs on his wonky Casio keyboard, a few rants Jack Dee would be proud to call his own, alongside some epic rambles.
The ramshackle nature of this is quite charming, but all the style swapping means that while some of O’Doherty’s material is very funny, some of it is merely smile-worthy. The funniest things in the show are when he’s either interacting with the odd heckler or delivering anecdotes from his adolescence, which although puerile, are extremely funny. He dips into these throughout the show, but also rambles about just how disorganised he is, which while funny, has been done perfectly already by Dylan Moran. His songs are a bit hit or miss too, they make a nice diversion, but aren’t comical enough to be made a central part of the show.
O’Doherty refers a number of times to the fact that “he’s not very famous” and tries to “avoid doing s**t TV”, which is actually something of a shame. If O’Doherty was to do Live at the Apollo or a Comedy Store special and had to trim his set to a tight 20 minutes of his finest gags, then he might do really well and find himself in much bigger venues than this.
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