Jimmy Mcghie

Laughing Horse @The Pear Tree – Main Room (Venue 257)

Jimmy is 39. Single. Living in his much more successful sister’s attic. And half his prospective audience have just left the bar to go out into the newly arrived sunshine. He is thinking about having a mid-life crisis. But a proper one, like the one his Dad had. Although, the way things are going for Jimmy, I suspect he couldn’t afford it.

This is his ninth Edinburgh hour and on this, first performance (Jimmy hasn’t done previews), it is still a bit sketchy as a whole. As individual bits, it is brilliant and the experience is a little like having a master chef talking you through the top quality ingredients he is using in tomorrow’s banquet. You get to look and sniff and feel the quality of the stuff, it just hasn’t been cooked into a ‘thing’ yet. Many people here call this ‘work in progress’ and charge quite a lot to watch. Jimmy just pulls back the curtain between his space and the bar and gives us what he’s got.

Car-crash dates and existential angst, his daddy issues and the effects of growing up in the very bowels of the patriarchy, niche porn, millenials and why bottling it up is the way to go, together with an ongoing bonding experience with our small but enthusiastic audience make for a satisfying hour with a comic who is supremely good at what he does, even when he is not doing very much.

Jimmy even nixes his bucket speech because he reckons it wouldn’t be right. And this is a man with a mid-life crisis to finance. Mcghie is one of the few comics who come with my money-back guarantee …

Until 24 August. Today 5:20pm.