Review by Jay Richardson

As if he wasn't risking backlash enough with his show title, Rhys Mathewson sets up a scoring system whereby the audience reward him with a £1 or 50p symbol for every good joke in his hour. To be fair, he barely has the props for more than the £10.50 he's accumulated by the end. But if he wants his Fringe debut to seem like good value, he's on decidedly shaky ground.

Money is a reasonable, catch-all theme for a show. But unlike say, Keith Farnan's 2011 treatment of the subject, Mathewson approaches it so superficially that he'd be better off discarding it altogether. Far better to state that he's always broke at the top of the hour and not to try to hang so many disparate and unconnected routines off it.

Introducing himself as a chubby man with distinctive hair, establishing a self-mocking streak and his puppyish style of engaging the crowd, the Kiwi reflects upon the KFC Double Down sandwich, just one of many risky innovations trialled on good-natured New Zealanders by a multinational eager to find out if a country will swallow a burger of bacon and cheese packed between two chunky bits of chicken. With no bun. Suffice to say, they did in their millions.

There's no real punchline to this, beyond incredulity that such freakish cuisine could exist. But junk food is a recurring craving for Mathewson, and one of his more effective set pieces comes with the story of how, having moved to the UK this time last year, he finished a boozy Fringe all-nighter outside McDonald’s. Outraged that they weren't open 24 hours, as in his homeland, he found himself overwhelmed by a rare and intimidating display of patriotic pride.

Elsewhere, he relates an awkward, impromptu dance he underwent in the street with a middle-aged woman, a road rage incident he initiated and his first, short-lived romance. Largely unremarkable, at least the latter is linked tangentially to the money theme, his cheapness and stupidity prompting him to buy a less-than-impressive gift. But when he segues into his embarrassing dancefloor moves, deploying his big frame capably to jerk through some ridiculous shapes, he suffers by comparison to his compatriot Rhys Darby's similar but more imaginative, committed and demented nightclub routines.

Distancing himself from the sort of sexually confident man that chats up a woman by removing his T-shirt to reveal a tattoo, Mathewson somehow contrives to come across as a snob, likewise offering little justification for regarding male models as 'cunts' beyond unappetising envy. One begins to wonder if the rowdy Saturday night crowd he badmouths on a number of occasions were entirely to blame.

Although tongue-in-cheek, his casual dismissal of his university education and feckless decision to spend his spare cash on marijuana don't endear him either, as he can't fully convince you he regards them as failings. He has a natural amiability but tests audience patience by foisting it hard upon you.

Struggling to extract laughs from an intimate bedroom injury in the romantic coda to his hour, he accidentally betrays the denouement with a slip of the tongue. Still, the epilogue at least undercuts some of his ending's mawkishness.

Unfortunately, his supposed abiding inspiration, easy mockery of a violently homophobic Mike Tyson rant, again manages the wretched trick of making you sympathise with the ex-boxer, if only a little, as a reaction against his intellectual smugness.

Review date: 21 Aug 2013
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson