Review by Steve Bennett

With his low, husky voice (possibly down to a cold the night Chortle saw him), he doesn’t make a great fuss about his conversational delivery, underselling himself and lowering expectations.

It’s difficult, too, to get too excited about the subjects he brings up, not venturing far beyond the now-accepted lingua franca of stand-up: mostly about how men and women differ, and how tricky it is for the two to live together under the same roof.

Men are useless, simple and insensitive, is the thrust of his argument, while women are unfathomably complex – an attitude which wins him female fans, just before he hits them with a swipe of vicious misogyny.

Yet despite such unprepossessing subject matter, Crow does come up with some original, funny lines, if untroubled by political correctness. There are a smattering of nuggets here, if not enough to start a goldrush.

He also has some enjoyable anecdotes about his half-Irish, half-South African upbringing, but applies staple comic formulae rather too often, also, especially easy metaphors that allows him to drop a joke about one topic into a routine about another. But again, despite the overuse of the familiar form, he can produce some surprisingly witty results, delivered with expert timing.

He is, in short, a perfectly decent club comic, with no obvious ambitious to be anything more than an easy crowd-pleaser. At that, he’s a relative success – though he may disappoint those wanting something more personal, incisive or inventive from their comedy.

Review date: 26 Oct 2006
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett