Comedy review: Rob Delaney: Meat, Edinburgh

ROB Delaney is not a fan of architects, though if a building is designed in such a way that he is able to spy on overweight people indulging in an S&M orgy, then that’s probably OK.

Rob Delaney shows a lack of vulnerability amid the rantings. Picture: Getty

Rob Delaney: Meat - The Stand, Edinburgh

* * *

Boston’s Delaney does seem to be an admirer of Britain, the place he now calls home, yet curiously he hasn’t yet found a British substitute for Iowa, which he still loves to criticise, and such mixed-messaging ultimately creates problems.

Delaney’s main concern is with the human body, something that never fails to repel him and leads to some of his dingiest musings, whether on the subject of sex, childbirth or the structural integrity of sports bras.

Given that the comic insists nothing he says should be taken especially seriously, we can only presume he’s joshing around about his seeming love of the NHS as well as the horror he feels about US drone strikes on wedding parties. The one sequence of “truth” is his workshopping of a demonstrably non-funny family story.

No-one is asking for a perfect through-line of arguments in an hour of stand-up but Delaney’s contradictions are couched in a persona which unattractively veers from the mildly detached to the super-arrogant.

Unlike Louis CK, his fellow Bostonian and the comic cited most often in comparison, there’s a real lack of vulnerability amid the rantings (largely directed at his wife). CK’s self-loathing merely acts as a rope to lasso us into his world but when Delaney pushes you away, you stay pushed.

Seen on 01.07.15