John Robins: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

The middle of the road is not known as the most fertile ground for comedy. When faced with a contentious issue, the comic’s typical first instinct is to come down on one side of the fence and snipe at those on the other. 

But genial, mild-mannered John Robins doesn’t take the obvious route. Instead, he preaches tolerance, moderation and a mistrust of those who take the moral high ground. As it turns out, this makes for a refreshing lack of sanctimony and an unusually convincing brand of self-deprecation – but his moderate attitude yields only middling laughs.

Religion is the loose focal point for the set, explored through stories including Robins’ self-deluding belief in “kitty heaven” and, intriguingly, his relationship with his pious estranged father. On top of this, he seeks to deflate a host of opinionated “divs”: his “alternative” friends; smug atheist comics; purveyor of boneheaded satirical graffiti and fellow Bristolian Banksy. As an unassuming big softie, he is well placed to do so, and offers up some salient points with minimal force.

His many anecdotes are full of colour and pace, particularly that in which he is bombarded with sex toys while playing a rowdy weekend comedy club unbefitting of his gentle humour. Each is delivered with Robins’ uncool, almost Partridgesque vocabulary, comprising clunky initialisms and gratuitous overuse of “dude” – all of which goes down a treat. 

But without the vehemence enjoyed by his more black-and-white contemporaries, he wends his way to a mawkish and knowingly feeble conclusion, and this perfectly enjoyable show—like some of the material contained therein—fails to pay off in any memorable fashion.