Robin Ince

Robin Ince is clearly a man who is obsessed by books. He wears a t-shirt bearing the slogan of New York City’s Strand Bookstore, “18 miles of books”, and the stage of his 2007 Fringe show is adorned with nothing more than a small table laden with an assortment of hardbacks and manuscripts. In fact, Ince claims that he was once described by a reviewer as “a trendy Sociology lecturer” and it’s hard not to get this very apt description out of your head for the rest of his set.

Ince’s erudite but accessible repertoire covers a number of diverse topics, from The Big Bang and evolution to Schopenhauer and shagging. But while Ince is clearly a well-versed, intelligent and likeable comedian, it’s difficult to escape the feeling that his comedy would be so much sharper if he didn’t allow himself to be constantly distracted by his ever-buzzing mind - although his disparate and scatterbrained routine is part of what endears him to the audience. Maybe this way, he’d get to the planned finale of his show more regularly and his scholarly anecdotes would be a little more coherent.

Moreover, Ince punctuates his allotted hour with shouting and gurning a little too frequently for comfort. But then again, it is nearly the end of the Fringe. And if you can’t rely on moaning to get you through the dregs of the festival, what else have you got?