Review by Nione Meakin

What the hell is wrong with Matt Green? Nothing, is the answer; he's a confident and likable stand-up offering some perfectly entertaining skits on iPhones, childhood humiliation and slankets, and a memorable selection of snappy similies.

He's smart enough to ad-lib the idea of 'a timebomb heckle', sporting enough to identify himself as the man from the Crunchy Nut Bites advert and run through his line for the benefit of anyone struggling to recall his appearance. He'll even show you his weird, double-jointed fingers if he's in the mood.

Yet for all the boxes he ticks, or perhaps because of all the boxes he ticks, Green is curiously lacking in any real character. He could almost be an actor playing a stand-up: a good one, mind, as he's never less than convincing, but there's just not a lot of genuine passion on display.

Green does himself few favours with the bitty material. Though there seems to be a loose theme of embarrassment, it's doesn't really gather any pace. The blown-up school photo of him flagrantly failing to play a recorder in a school concert is cute, but there's about the extent of it.

His tale of witnessing Ken Livingstone attempting to discipline his children in a London swimming pool offers a small return for the length of the set-up and the episode he describes when a couple of prostitutes stole his keys, inspiring him to let rip with some farcically mild retort, also lacks the impact it promises.

There are enough laughs to keep the show chugging along nicely –the idea of a phone sex line aimed at women where men are paid to listen is a particularly neat gag – but there's no real sense of cohesion, or occasion. When it ends after just 40 minutes, it's telling that no one seems to mind.

Review date: 15 Aug 2010
Reviewed by: Nione Meakin