Camden Fringe Review: Robin Ince

Rachel Holdsworth
By Rachel Holdsworth Last edited 175 months ago
Camden Fringe Review: Robin Ince

RobinInce.jpg A couple of weeks ago the Guardian ran a comedy special, managing to piss off a few comedians along the way. Not Robin Ince though; he read the paper's announcement that Daily Mail jokes were 'not hot':

"Mocking the sanctimonious, permanent moral outrage of the tabloid right has become lazy shorthand for the sanctimonious, permanent moral outrage of the comedy left. Messrs Marcus Brigstocke, Robin Ince and Jack Whitehall, take note."

and was quite pleased, seeing as his new show, Robin Ince versus the Moral Majority, mainly takes aim at the current lifestyle-obsessed fatuousness of the broadsheets, particularly the Guardian. Ooo, it could almost be karmic - if Ince wasn't one of comedy's foremost rationalists and likely to declare such ideas nonsense.

So, in a room competing for the title of The Hottest In Camden, we are moved to laughter by a man who looks like a very angry librarian. Ince has never been someone to force belly laughs, but his elegantly formed rants about consumer culture, Natasha Kaplinsky and the Daily Express's outrage over custard doughnuts for torture victims are consistently entertaining and mirthsome, and do prompt the occasional burst of guffaws. He's got so many ideas he struggled to fit them all in last night; he'll be whittling and honing for the rest of the week. But you don't go to Robin Ince for polished perfection, you go to Robin Ince to see an everyman, on the verge of exploding at the insanity of the world we live in. And he's fantastic at it.

Robin Ince is at the Camden Head until Friday 14th August. Camden Fringe runs until 30th August. All tickets £7.50. Check out other Fringe coverage on Londonist.

Last Updated 09 August 2009