Review by Nione Meakin

How much you'll enjoy this show depends largely on how funny you find toilet humour.

If the answer's 'not very', you're in for a pretty tedious hour. Lavatory-related jokes make up a considerable chunk of the 26-year-old Geordie's debut and while not bad as they go, it's hardly such stuff as comedy dreams are made on.

He doesn't show much more ambition in the meat-and-potatoes observations that pepper the set; flimsy anecdotes about predictive text mix-ups and arguments with his girlfriend might steer him safely through a Saturday night Jongleurs club slot but they don't bear comparison up in Edinburgh.

He's a likeable guy, if a little nervy (machine gun laughter at your own punchlines is never good form) and has evidently put work into the construction of his less anecdotal material – perhaps too much in some instances.   A joke that imagines a recession-hit Narnia is too laboured for the Ross Noble flight-of-fancy it aspires to, ditto his vision of evolution where dogs bite back after years of submission. 

Still, both are marginally more interesting than what he describes as his 'second most embarassing hard-on story'.

Humphries doesn't seem sure who he's trying to be here and the collision of over-reaching material on complex topics and crude pub anecdotes is an awkward one. With a more confident, measured performer, perhaps the different strands would weave together more naturally but he's not there yet, making for a bumpy and at times uncomfortable ride.

Review date: 11 Aug 2010
Reviewed by: Nione Meakin