Edinburgh Festival Fringe comedy reviews: Twonkey's Greatest Twitch | Daniel Downie: Jacobite | MC Hammersmith: Straight Outta Brompton | Alexandra Haddow: Not My Finest Hour | Moses Storm: Perfect Cult

Our latest batch of Fringe comedy reviews includes a barrage of clowning at its crazily creative best, a charming ramble through Scottish history, and some fiendishly clever improvised hip-hop.

Twonkey's Greatest Twitch *****

Voodoo Rooms (Venue 68) until 27 August

If you have missed the many magical years of Twonkey at the Fringe then get yourself along to the Voodoo Rooms and experience the most creative crazy in showbusiness.

For those of us who have accompanied the man on his many adventures over the years this is like a wonderful reunion of many of your past loves. Sing along with The Flying Tailor as we chant “the worst part of the orange is the rind” before the song takes a gothic dive. Tiny Al Capone makes a welcome return and, just as quickly, is tossed aside to make way for some mushroom related silliness with a Goat Girl In Trouble.

Yes, we are talking drugs. But we are fine because we have moved on to a song in the style of Kraftwerk. My notes say 'Galashiels', 'Jaffa Cakes' and 'bushy eyes'.

It is tricky to make sense of Twonkey, once he gets the bit between his teeth. But sense is overrated. This 'best of' show is like catching comedy lightning in a jar. Custard Club - his abandoned musical love letter to custard – has long haunted Twonkey and he shares some extracts with us here. Or tries to.

The entire room goes into meltdown now. This is a glorious disaster. This is clowning at its very best. I cannot remember seeing an audience so reduced to rocking back and forth as tears of laughter flowed. The stage is littered with devastated puppets and props by this point and and Twonkey is muttering something about trying to make it slicker tomorrow.

Twonkey's Greatest Twitch (PIC Steve Ullathorne)

The fortune telling ship's wheel makes predictions, Chris Hutchinson gets a makeover, we play a fascinating game entitled Sniff My Cottage and all five of us in the audience leave bathed in seratonin.

Kate Copstick

Daniel Downie: Jacobite ****

Scottish Comedy Festival @ the Beehive Inn (Venue 178) until 27 August

Jacobite fans should be aware that, for a couple of reasons, Daniel just did not have time to do the research needed for a full show about the Jacobites, and instead offers 50 minutes packed with funny sprinkled with a small but satisfying amount of Scottish history and genealogy. I, for one, was perfectly happy with that. Although finding out that the south west part of Scotland's genealogical broth is of Welsh origin was a bit of a shock.

Downie reassures us, early on, that he will not be talking about his 'feelings' and the room tangibly relaxes. His crowd work is a joy, albeit here it turned into more of a two way street than most comics could cope with. However I did learn, in one interaction, that the women's football world cup is referred to as 'The Gashes'.

Daniel explains the important part played by nudity and midgies in the fight against the invading Roman armies and his proposals for new dance-based border controls – in the style of the existing India / Pakistani border – are a thing of absolute delight. Downie has hidden depths. Just wait till you see him Salsa!I fail to see how his SuBo-based ideas for checking for Scottish nationality can go wrong.

Downie is a commanding presence but absolutely charming. Fans of his native Dingwall vernacular are in for a huge treat, as are Burns fans. This hour fairly belts by and that is rare. By the time we get to Daniel's Grannie and her ways with a knob of butter (in a superbly crafted call back which heightens the laugh) we are happy, happy people. Relax Daniel, yer nothing like Adele.

Kate Copstick

MC Hammersmith: Straight Outta Brompton ***

Monkey Barrel (Venue 515) until 27 August

“Less Tupac than two packs of hummus”, MC Hammersmith is on a mission to bring improvised hip-hop to the Fringe direct from the mean street of middle-class West London, or more accurately from just down the road in the genteel Scottish Capital where he’s lived for the past 12 years.

What this equates to is a stereotypically mild-mannered slightly posh bloke spitting raps using suggestions from the audience, both in person and via pre-show online submissions. So, we get wordplay inspired but the likes of audience members’ jobs, 12 random suggested words and objects produced from the crowd’s pockets.

Describing it as “improvised chaos”, performer Will Naameh actually runs a pretty tight ship, with a rigid structure meaning the quality of the show is unlikely to dip on any given day. It’s fiendishly clever stuff of course, as he always seems to be thinking at least five lines ahead to come up with the perfect rhyme. Admittedly it’s basically one joke, but it’s a good joke and delivers consistent laughs.

Straight Outta Brompton offers a guaranteed crowd-pleasing hour, particularly for those predisposed to the art of improvisation, although the lack of any prepared material to break up the ad-libbing makes it feel like a killer 30 minute cabaret set stretched to double the length.

David Hepburn

Alexandra Haddow: Not My Finest Hour ***

Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Two) (Venue 33) until 28 August

Alexandra Haddow's set herself quite the challenge for her debut stand-up hour, chronicling the affair she had with a much older, married television presenter when she was in her 20s, at a time when stories about celebrities preying on younger colleagues are splashed all over the media.

To be fair, the little she discloses of her former lover depicts him as unlikely to trouble the front pages. And to be fairer to her younger self, she was relatively naïve about the relationship. And though the consequences were pretty significant, it's part of an entire romantic history that the comic doesn't paint in the most enviable light, from the humiliating aftermath of her losing her virginity, to seeing another ex whisked from these shores by the immigration authorities.

Wise after the fact, Haddow offers an appealing tone of self-deprecating ruefulness, though she'd be justified in greater anger towards some of the men in her life, not least the philandering presenter. She's likeable and engaging, despite casting herself as a scarlet woman. But Not My Finest Hour should probably have been saved till she was more accomplished as a storyteller, as it doesn't fully capitalise on the magnitude of the events it's recalling.

Jay Richardson

Moses Storm: Perfect Cult ***

Pleasance Courtyard (Beneath) (Venue 33) until 27 August

Moses Storm's ambitious Fringe debut is trying to be two things at once, an account of his adolescence in a tiny doomsday cult and a spoof of the hollow religiosity and collective delusion that enable such sects to exist.

With considerable stage trappings and a lengthy preamble that he proceeds to undermine almost from the first, the charismatic, vaguely otherworldly American is a fine improviser, justifying his will-to-power as cult leader by fleetly, gymnastically ad-libbing around the responses his followers in the audience give him, even if some are inclined to mischief in order to try to trip him up.

The problem is that the details he shares of his own family's experience are pathetic and sympathy-inducing in the broader sweep, even if he finds humour in the details. Rather than enriching each other, the two strands of Perfect Cult work against each other and you wish that he'd simply bisected them and served up two distinct shows.

Because Storm is a gifted storyteller, who transports you to, and inducts you into his singular upbringing, while also being an adroit character comic, adept at manipulating a crowd and thinking on his feet.

Jay Richardson