Review: Martin Mor Is Blocked

Stand-up veteran Martin Mor has a pretty unassailable approach to comedy, trading in rascally anecdotes with good-natured interrogation and gentle ribbing of the crowd. He's well-travelled, particularly appreciating the presence of foreigners in the room as a chance to spark a conversation, but the Northern Irishman isn't particularly interested in pushing any boundaries. Occasionally given to rambling as he grasps for a punchline to move on from a tale, the journey tends to be the important thing.

Mor's got a liberal, progressive soul and the recurring theme of this show is his activism, whether that's taking American gun nuts to task or protesting Donald Trump at his Turnberry golf course. Getting blocked on Twitter by the president, the NRA and the Creationist Church isn't perhaps the unique, radical gesture he believes it to be. But credit where it's due, he was riling Trump while he was merely an objectionable businessman, illustrating Mor's mischievous mentality and fondness for an argument. Approaching a bully like the POTUS, he knows to surround himself with middle-aged, Scottish working-class women too.

With the police, he's perhaps more conciliatory than you might expect, understanding that they're just doing their job, even if he mocks their intelligence on the rare occasions they think they've caught him out. Protective of the NHS, he reveals the unlikely benefits of having “Viking's Disease” in his hand, but ill-advisedly tries to end with a nothing anecdote about being accused of queue jumping. Fortunately, his bucket speech is more assured crowd work, so he departs on a relative high.