Comedy review: Tim Vine: Sunset Milk Idiot

“THIS is a night of variety” 
proclaimed John Archer, the comedy magician who acted as warm-up guy for the evening’s main turn. We were indeed in for a relatively old school show, yet there’s also something almost radical about Tim Vine’s madcap comedy.

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh ****

The commitment to his cause was unwavering from first moment to last, with the stand-up rattling out an unbelievable number of gags (most of them inspired, some smothered in cheese) over the course of 75 uninterrupted minutes.

There was a roar of approval when he introduced his “pen behind the ear” routine (there’s nothing complicated about it: he’s simply throwing a pen in the air and trying to catch it behind his ear), and although he launched into an encore without being invited to do so, it’s hard to believe there would have been a soul in the room who didn’t expect or crave it.

In this age of the comedy confessional, with awards given out to the stand-ups who tell us the most difficult stories from their life, it’s refreshing to come away from a Tim Vine gig knowing little more about the man than you did when you went in.

“I’m 51!” is the only bit of 
personal information he revealed, and he presumably only mentioned that to let us know that he too can barely credit the lengths to which a grown man will go in order to get a laugh.

BRIAN DONALDSON