Review by Steve Bennett

Of course, he also lays himself open to the charge that some of the projects should have remained permanently abandoned, not returned to like a dog with his vomit – which is possibly true. But for the most part, there’s enough in each notion to be worth mentioning for the few minutes they get.

Woolf covers all the Edinburgh bases, from the geeky challenge shows, to character pieces, to strongly-themed stand-up premises. Strangely for a member of acclaimed sketch group Cowards, it’s the character pieces that are the weakest. He self-effacingly picks apart the flaws in his own creations, but that doesn’t magic them away, even though his modest, warm Welsh charm generally lulls the hour along very pleasantly. That said, his old codger proposing marriage is delightful and strangely touching.

The high-concept ideas tend to work the best. In Now Reap The Social Whirlwind, he encourages us all to send a bizarre text message to a friend, just to make the relationship more awkward; while Please Spread The Following Lies was an attempt to get an outlandish celebrity rumour into the press. Neither would have made a particularly great hour, but are fun ideas to explore briefly.

A couple of the notions obsessed with celebrities were bad ideas from the get-go, such as the drive to get Rick Moranis back on screen, or a concerted campaign to wind up Jeremy Clarkson.

But if Woolf is looking for one style to run with next year, it might be the fall-back of the themed stand-up show. In Lloyd Woolf: Justice Warrior, the versatile Cambridge graduate shows a flair for anecdotal monologues plus an ability to inventively extrapolate opinions to make them funny, as he considers the topic of crime and punishment.

For all the whimsy and charm of some of his more off-the-wall notions, it’s good jokes strung together in a monologue that prove the most effective way of making an audience laugh. Who’d have thunk it?

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

Review date: 1 Jan 2008
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett