Review by Steve Bennett at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

He’s only 29, but Nick Cody seems older. His bearing isn’t so much of the typical millennial, more like a battle-scarred, middle-aged road comic, certain in his opinions and his right to be on stage.

The style is robust pub comedy, sometimes playing it safe by echoing familiar thoughts back at the audience, but more engaging when he tells embarrassing anecdotes that expose him as the idiot.

His recent wedding (and stag do) prompts musings on the difference between men who just want a piss-up and  women who care about the aesthetics of the big day. It’s a black-and-white world of old certainties.

Similarly straightforward is his sneer at the working classes for their racism and stupid kids’ names – and this from a self-proclaimed left-winger – which he excuses because he has an ‘inner bogan’ himself. After all he’s a UFC fan who can’t stand –or understand –vegans.

The comedy can be brutal at times – including possibly the first joke about the terrorist lorry attack on the Munich Christmas market, which very much rests on shock value. However he does have a point about the vegan couple whose attempt to climb Everest ended in the wife’s death.

Every show needs a hero, though, and here’s where his mum steps up to the plate, with a cracking story of defiance and some cutting one-liners. Surely Mrs Cody needs to do her own stand-up hour soon.

On Fire is topped and tailed by stories in which Cody himself is the butt of the joke, including the stand-out, humiliating, routine about getting caught short while on a trip to the States. There’s also a satisfying callback that gives the show some semblance of structure, even though it’s little more than unconnected routines that slide elegantly into each other.

Cody has the gift of the gab and the stage presence to make this one-sided conversation flow entertainingly and deliver punchlines that land squarely, even if few of those hit targets that have already suffered a battering from comics who’ve gone before.

Review date: 19 Apr 2017
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett