Brighton Fringe stand-up review

Taking on the liberal left is big business in comedy these days. And as Ricky Gervais has shown us, it usually takes the form of attacking society’s most marginalised with Fox News talking points as Piers Morgan cheers you on from the Twitter sidelines.

Omar Ibrahim offers a more nuanced take on the hypocrisies and rigidity of left-wing thinking, especially regarding race. His take is detoxified by coming from a largely sympathetic standpoint, from playing up his own stupidity and – of course - from not being white.

He exposes the blind spots of the well-meaning white allies – or ‘wallies’, as he catchily calls them – and mocks the patronising tunnel vision of a pal he nicknames Captain Woke. The tone is affectionate, as he appreciates his targets’ well-meaning intent, but food for thought for the progressives likely to come to a comedy night at a fringe festival in Brighton from a bloke called Omar.

Such a tempered approach is always going to be more subdued than rabble-rousing, but Ibrahim ekes some strong laughs out of subjects from identity to cultural appropriation. And even if other segments slip into the ‘more interesting than funny’ trap, they are at least interesting, and delivered with easy-going good humour that keeps the room cheerful.

The more social and small-p political segments combine with a little detail about his background as the son of a Pakistani-Ugandan immigrant. But given his reservations about fetishising ethnicity, this is merely an aside.

There are some missteps in the 40-minute set. A segment about repatriations is necessarily complicated, but he makes it more so, to the point it’s absolutely garbled. And a preamble gets stuck in repeated, dull references about him smoking dope – what a rebel! – that muddle the main story.

But the bulk of the show addresses hot-potato topics with sensitivity and honesty that does not get in the way of getting solid laughs from the dumb behaviour of idiots wherever they sit on the political spectrum. And it serves as a reminder that we are all idiots, himself included.

Review date: 30 May 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton Electric Arcade