Comedy review: Martin "Bigpig" Mor

MARTIN "BIGPIG" MOR **THE UNIVERSAL, GLASGOW

FORMER circus performer Martin "Bigpig" Mor has been known to throw the odd knife around during his stand-up routines. Tonight, it's just barbs and slurs that he's chucking out into the crowd.

But it's virtually impossible to be wholly offended by this perpetually jovial, ZZ Top-bearded Coleraine comic, who takes little time in warming his audience to the cause; quite a feat in itself given that he kicks off with the obligatory Josef Fritzl gag. Well, obligatory if this was the summer of 2008.

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What Mor delivers is not so much a show, but an elongated masterclass in the humble art of the compre, furiously working his crowd to squeeze out every last drop of humour, and here he is blessed with a drunk Orcadian, an internet comedy reviewer, a bald man accompanied by his daughter and an STD clinic worker among his gathering. What we don't get is freewheeling anarchy of the Ross Noble/Phil Kay school, but a man begging for his audience to bail him out when his weaker material fails.

Quite why Mor opts to spend so much time ignoring his scripted material is unclear, however, for there are some great gags and stories within his armoury.

This Northern Irish comic may often be mistaken in the street for the North Pole's most famous gift-giver, but if jokes were Christmas presents, the children of the world are being short-changed.