Gig review by Steve Bennett at the Leicester Comedy Festival

If the internet’s taught us anything, it’s the almost infinite human capacity to enjoy looking at pictures of cats. And what’s a good enough hook for a million Facebook feeds is a good enough hook for a comedian.

John Cooper’s show does what it says on the flyer, and features dozens of photographs of our feline friends. Roughly, the premise is that he can rant and rave about his midlife crisis – he’s 39 – and more; and if it threatens to get too heavy he can calm us with the ‘aaaah’ factor. It’s an extension of the cuddly toy fellow stand-up Carey Marx used to pull out every time he did a particularly dark joke – although no one would call Cooper, in his chunky Muppet jumper, dark.

The Leicester Comedy Festival is only the third time he’s performed this show, and it’s still very loose. Though his affably bumbling manner and tenuous grip on logic suggests it will always be so. Seekers of incisive, intellectual humour should probably not look towards a show entitled Pictures Of Cats in the first place.

For the last few years, Cooper’s been donning a duffle coat to perform on the circuit as the character poet Danny Pensive, but now it’s time to talk about himself. He scattily meanders around between his own cat ownership, jobs that made him the face of a bathroom showroom and a regional magazine, an ill-fated bronchoscopy.

It’s something of a mental download without the form or purpose you’d expect from well-honed routines. He skirts around saying too much or delving too deeply, but his soft amiability has a certain endearing charm. Any of that ‘ranting and raving’ attitude he promised to unleash remains firmly concealed beneath his mild-mannered exterior.

In keeping with the conversational style, Cooper seeks affirmation, and perhaps more stories, from the audience - but they are a reticent bunch this afternoon. with questions such as: ‘Has anyone got cats with weird habits?’ falling on deaf ears, which doesn’t do much for giving the hour much weight. Even the pictures of the cats aren’t from the premiership of cuteness as they haven’t been harvested from the best online collections, but ‘ethically sourced’, with Cooper asking friends and contacts for the contributions.

And like thumbing through those albums, watching Pictures Of Cats is diverting and modestly agreeable, even if there are more entertaining and powerful diversionsto be had elsewhere.

Review date: 10 Feb 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett