Sorry for spoiling it, but Ed needs new material
Ed Byrne: Spoiler Alert Not quite as funny as usual ★★★✩✩
About three-quarters of the way through his new set, Mock the Week star Ed byrne ruminates on whether divorcing his wife might provide him with source material for a future show.
And, whether she might actually encourage him by seeing it as a good career move.
this admittedly left-field idea, shared with a packed crowd, comes via the thought that big changes in his personal life (getting married, having kids), have previously generated hit shows for the genial Irishman.
that, and the fact that his friend, Scots thriller writer Christopher brookmyre, had his hero Jack Parlabane divorce his anaesthetist wife two books ago to no detrimental effect. (brookmyre’s wife is an anaesthetist).
Now, while not for one second wishing any disharmony on the byrne household, (hey, I loved the marriage show, the having kids show, the coming to terms with middle age show, the byrnes seem a great bunch, and I feel I almost know them intimately,) the gag, while funny, pinpoints a comedy truth. Namely, that you’re only as good as your material.
A strong theme can provide rich pickings for top stand-ups. And Ed byrne is undoubtedly one of the country’s top stands-ups.
but a stronger theme is exactly what Spoiler Alert needs. In fact, you could say the spoiler alert about Spoiler Alert is that while byrne is incapable of not being funny, such is the high bar he’s set that the hit quotient of genuine LOL moments the floppy-haired charmer delivers here are in shorter supply than normal.
Which isn’t to say the show is bad. It’s not. And byrne gets off to a flyer by revealing the title is about how spoiled his kids have become, then setting off on a hilarious riff about their laissezfaire attitude on a trip to Lapland to see Santa. that, and how despite having a trampoline in his garden bigger than his first flat, (whereas the young Ed’s trampoline was called his bed), his sons ask him to bounce them on it as they can’t be bothered.
Elsewhere, bucket lists not for the dying come in for some flak, and the fact that where once byrne calculated his finances in pints, but now does his adding up in skiing holidays, points to his own spoiled failings.
but Spoiler Alert, which tours after Edinburgh, meanders – its main focus too often giving way to amiable rambling chuckles (some even about rambling), that can’t paper over the cracks of the disjointed and bitty feel of the show.
Assembly George Square until Aug 27