Comedy review: Bob Slayer Outdrinks Australia, Alternative Fringe @ The Hive (Venue 313), Edinburgh

COMEDY is a broad church. And Bob Slayer could probably best be described as that church’s Quasimodo. In the dank, beer-drenched bowels of The Hive, he lurches about in a frilly shirt, now pausing to demand another pint from the bar, now revealing secrets of his cousin’s sex life as she turns ever pinker in the back row.

Bob Slayer Outdrinks Australia

Alternative Fringe @ The Hive (venue 313)

Star rating: * * *

He is here to tell us the terrible tale of his time in Australia last year, with his show, somewhat ill-advisedly called Bob Slayer Outdrinks Australia. It is not an inspiring tale but it is very funny. What little of it we actually get to hear. Almost everything Slayer says and does is very funny. He is a delightfully appalling man/child at whom it is almost impossible to take offence. An hour with him is always unrepeatable (in all senses of the word) and always unforgettable. And audiences come back time after time for more madness. One couple are here having seen him the previous night in a show where Bob, having been instructed by the promoter to 
“Pull him off” (with regard to another comic) proceeded to do just that. Slayer is an original. Gloriously crazy, fabulously funny. Long may he slay.

• Until 26 August. Today 7pm.