Luke Toulson: There Are So Many Things I Can't Do

Luke Toulson doesn’t think very highly of himself. Rejected and disillusioned, he makes clear that he’s the failed middle child with architect siblings. In the small, stagnant Pleasance Cellar he hunches over the microphone – a loser, unmarried. "Do these look like eyes with any hope left in them?" he quips, looking like a rough Jeff Daniels.

Yet Toulson has made something of a career out of his self-affirmed mediocrity. He’s been in Edinburgh Fringe shows since 2000, won the 2007 Hackney Empire New Act of the Year and was nominated for the Perrier Best Newcomer Award with Stephen Harvey in 2005. Either Toulson has been very lucky, or there is, in fact, a certain charm to his overwrought observations.

The show begins with material on Ryanair and considerable repartee with the audience. Toulson undersells his patter with the crowd – "this is why I don’t do banter," he sighs. Heavily aware of the reviews he’s had, each section which was slammed or praised by the press is given an introduction as he reads from the back of his flyer.

The Telegraph called his Scottish accent competition "suicidally brave": it is the low-point of the show with a Lulu impression from the audience and a squirming Toulson begging for easy laughs. Things pick up when Toulson deals with his personal life – it is here where this awkward but award winning comic is as funny and eloquent as he should be.