The Groggy Squirrel

Ed Byrne is a charming Irish comedian who can get away with some fairly tasteless comedy with a naughty twinkle in his eye.

He began with a bit of housekeeping about latecomers and reminded us to turn our phones off, adding some mobile phone gags. Ed uses the Michael Douglas film “Falling Down” as a tenuous vehicle for his amusing ravings about his frustrations with everything.

He spoke a lot about contemporary pop music and how he’s ashamed at liking Christina Aguilera but hates James Blunt and although his material about “You’re Beautiful” seems a bit dated he did have some fresh amusing observations to make. He then went into why he hates modern rap music because it has stopped being about repression and political messages and is now about bragging about how much money they’ve made, how annoying their bitches are and how good they are at rapping. I don’t like to call pot-kettle but Ed did go on a bit too much about how annoying his girlfriend is and about all the panel shows he is now doing on TV in the UK & Ireland. A lot of his material he admitted to being stuff that didn’t make it to air on these panel shows.

Ed made observations about how he loves fantasising about being a spy, about the insanity of the Right Christian group in America called “God Hates Gays” about the correlation between high customer service in America and their lack of gun control laws among many other amusing things but I’m sure most audience members came out of his show remembering his impression of porn done in different accents, including Cockney, Australian and German.

This is the sort of show I probably wouldn’t take granny to see. Go with your friends and have a laugh, just don’t expect to come out of the show with your spine tingling or your face aching. His style is the same as it ever was so if you liked him before, you will probably enjoy this show.

Ed Byrne is performing Tues to Sun until April 29. See “Ed Byrne”:http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2007/show/242/ for booking details.