Comedy review: Best of Irish, The Stand Comedy Club, Glasgow

HOSTED by the evergreen Michael Redmond, this was only a reasonable showcase of Hibernian humour. Sending up the Frank McCourt vision of bygone, poverty-striken Ireland, with ruminations on a world without the internet and a mange tout famine, Redmond can always rely on his distinctive, whiskered and hangdog features to wring maximum laughs from his re-enactment of being electrocuted.

London-based Ulsterman Ryan McDonnell is slickly assured, but his material is solid rather than inspiring, offering a predictable Jedward punchline and only minor twists on well-trod observations on airport security and paedophile priests.

Rather better, if rough around the edges, was the highly promising Chris Kent. The young Corkman is a compelling storyteller of yarns based around misunderstandings, frequently with himself as the butt of the joke. He has a happy knack of garnishing his tales with just the right depth of detail to afford them authenticity, with sly callbacks and, every now and then, brutal or truly surprising payoffs. Occasionally a story meanders on too long, but his account of his dad crashing drunkenly through the family porch and blaming it on everything but the drink is beautifully delivered.

Finally, the seasoned Kevin Gildea started slowly as is his wont, but reckoned without the increasingly disruptive contributions of an inebriated punter, which meant he never truly had control of the gig. With the night petering out, he shrewdly opted for some crowd-pleasing cracks at his own lack of sartorial elegance and audible expanse of beer gut, but it wasn’t a classic performance from a normally unruffled stand-up.