Gig review by Steve Bennett

A taste of his own medicine, that’s what John Robins doled out to Stewart Lee in his Latitude set. Lee is known for doling out barbs at comedians more successful than him as a way of reinforcing his alternative, outsider status, lionised by many lower down the ladder.

But Robins has broken ranks, and has taken to highlighting the perceived hypocrisy of the ‘millionaire underdog’; calculating out the box-office receipts of Lee’s long sold-out runs. He also points out that the man who berated the commercialisation of the Edinburgh Fringe played in a venue with that receives a booze firm’s sponsorship; while further pondering just how much an outsider you can be when you’ve got your own telly show.

In his own defence, Robins wryly points out that dissing fellow stand-ups is ‘a format Stewart Lee invented, and I’d hate to see a petard go unused.’ The only problem might be that the world outside comedy might not be quite so knowledgable about Lee’s output; I heard a couple of conversations break out around me as punters tried to figure out who Lee was… and why he’d made Robins so vexed.

Robins appropriates some of Lee’s techniques of exaggeration, repetition and reductio ad absurdum for use against him – and elsewhere in his set. It can be a little indulgent, with verbose set-ups on, for example, a trip to New Zealand – but he’s always going somewhere with his discourse and there’s always a gag at the end of it.

The Lee material was not his only broadside at the comedy industry; he’s astute, too, on those comics who adopt an awkward ‘non-threatening’ stance to appeal to women – and making mention of feminism will only sweeten the deal. Though this is surely not cynical behaviour confined to stand-ups.

Robins shouldn’t need to resort to such techniques. His savvy routine began by pondering whether being in love would spell the death of his creativity, since comedy comes from pain, not a happy relationship. Though for all the initial positive spin, he later addressed the slow death of romance and excitement as familiarity breeds contempt… so finding a soul mate is not necessarily the end of his line.

There’s a fair bit of philosophising in all this, but it’s peppered with wry callbacks and knowing in-jokes to ease the passage of this considered, amusing material.

Review date: 18 Jul 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Latitude