Tom Stade: Oh F**k, do we need a title too!

Tom Stade insists he isn’t bitter about the loss of freedom to 13 years of married life and two kids. The evidence suggests otherwise. A slightly manic glint in his eye and the envious harassment he dishes out to the those couples in the audience who can still remember their honeymoon periods do not speak of a man completely at peace.

His overbearing demeanour creates a sense of menace from the start, not helped by the cramped obscurity of the Stand’s best hidden venue. Almost immediately he gets half the front-row’s names in order to browbeat them into providing lead-ins for his jokes. There is every sign of a long and fretful night ahead.

A lot of the hastily put together material is weak, and some of it is tasteless enough to make you squirm. Although there are a couple of inspired ideas, none of the material delves into anything revolutionary and Stade’s habit of reiterating punch-lines in a slightly sillier voice doesn’t do much to enhance the act.

But there’s something successfully perverse in his tactics. Somehow Stade turns this unpromising mess into deliciously embarrassed giggles by his sheer angry audacity.

Given the fact that he only wrote the show four days before the festival began, it is understandable that its content isn’t stunning. But despite this, there’s something about Stade’s performance which manages to squeeze a response out of the audience far better than many a more prepared and practiced comedian. Nervous laughter may not be the best, but it’s certainly better than no laughter at all.