Comedy review: Boothby Graffoe

IN 2007, the only comedian named after a Lincolnshire village announced he was taking a break from stand-up to concentrate on writing, primarily for Omid Djalili's TV show. Asides from the odd one-off gig, the comic born James Rogers has only now flung himself back into the spotlight with a full show entitled, weirdly, The Return Of Boothby Graffoe. Without his trusty muso partner Nick Pynn on board, Graffoe treats his technology as a natural sidekick, but when he's shown us the semi-comedic possibilities of his loop station once, he's show us it a million times.

Whereas the likes of Bill Bailey and Tim Minchin let their musical virtuoso act as a spur towards their comedy, Graffoe seems to have decided that it's much less fun to craft a bunch of jokes than it is to write some chord sequences and then pen arch, over-repetitive choruses about the Hartlepool monkey being hanged, or the German who left his circus with an elephant in tow and somehow succeeded in evading capture for a month.

Watched in a cavernous hall by a small hardcore of his gleeful fanbase, the animal kingdom play a major part in proceedings, at its best here when Graffoe is creating quickfire riffs on the theme of bugs and otters, but at its over-indulgent worst when he labours hard over an imaginary dialogue with his household pets.

The gentle Graffoe is certainly an amiable presence and a captivating musician – albeit one prone to the odd bum note, on tonight's evidence – but he is reliant all too literally these days on his effortless charm.