Comedy review: Tom Little - Chronically Underachieving Loser and Wasteman, PBH's Free Fringe @ Opium, Edinburgh

Starting animatedly jittery and barely settling down, Tom Little is defined by his restless, distracted energy and excellent joke writing.

Tom Little Chronically Underachieving Loser and Wasteman, PBHs Free Fringe @ Opium (Venue 96)

Tom Little - Chronically Underachieving Loser and Wasteman, PBH's Free Fringe @ Opium, Edinburgh * * *

With a superb opening, he muses to great effect on dietary guidelines, spinning a delightful flight of fantasy out of nothing more than basic maths and too much time inside his own head. It seems likely that he’s the only comic with a routine about the dictionary’s longest word.

And yet, his preoccupations tend towards the quotidian. If comedy about crisps was a recognised stand-up genre, he’d be coining it in, his painstaking deconstruction of flavours prompting him into another obsession, dolphins, whom he chides for their perverse evolution.

With his brilliant rewording of Wordsworth, imaginative variations on Hey Jude and an impression of Suede’s Brett Anderson that endears with its determined mediocrity, he’s a rough diamond.

Until 24 August

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