Josh Howie: Chosen

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Josh Howie is a spiritual man. He was brought up a Buddhist, took part in a Native American 'vision-quest' – a 24 hour search for his sacred animal, and has finally settled on Judaism. In his neurotic new show Howie recalls the incidents and accidents which have shaped his religious life and led to his becoming one of the Chosen. For a comedian in the Fringe, basing your entire show around religion is a brave move. Nowadays, while comedy frequently teeters on the edge of that grey area between amusing and inappropriate, religion is the one subject you can count on to enrage the pc-brigade.

Thankfully, Howie is fully aware of his potential to offend and rather than shying-away from it, he embraces this fact. "I can appreciate some of you might find jokes about the Holocaust inappropriate for comedy," he says after a particular close-to-the-line remark, "so I want to talk about Palestine." Howie's style is relaxed and friendly - he frequently interacts with the audience and uses a slide-show with pictures from his personal collection to illustrate his stories.

In such an intimate venue, seeing Chosen feels more like watching the Bar mitzvah speech of a good, albeit very funny friend, rather than a watching a fully-fledged Fringe production. Highlights include Howie's Jewish rap, written while trying to impress a new "cool" friend and the story of how he was banned from training to be a rabbi (I wont spoil it for you, but lets just say he was caught in a distinctly un-holy position). Howie is an intelligent comedian with daring material which is consistently very funny indeed.