Review by Steve Bennett

His impressive stature throws up some obvious material about all-you-can eat buffets, skinny people, nutritionalists and personal trainers, and although he has found very little thats new about these topics he delivers his material with such incredulity that he never fails to get a laugh.

From the moment he walks on stage until the second he says goodnight the room is filled with laughter. The longest silence that I counted was for seven seconds and with a hit rate like that even the old standard about airlines being a bit rubbish can be forgiven.

Pinette is warmth and charm personified. It is impossible not to be endeared by his cherub-like demeanor, which becomes all the more lovable when irked. The smallest thing will set him off, and the closer it relates to food the more vexed he will be.

He has a joyous incomprehension about ‘food browsers’ who pause at the front of a fast food queue to decide what they want, which throws up a hilarious little set about the weird and wonderful things he has heard people ask their servers.

He has particular gripes with health food, denouncing steamed vegetables as warm salad and ranting furiously about turnips. There is also a valuable lesson on how to recognise a shallot.

This is the only lesson you will learn, it is not until you leave the show and get your breath back that you realise that you have learned nothing, no boundary has been pushed, no preconception questioned. There is no theme, no grand point other than to make the audience laugh hard and laugh solidly, and Pinette hammers this point home masterfully.

Reviewed by: Corry Shaw

Review date: 1 Jan 2008
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett