‘Just jokes and you don’t have to think.” That’s Josh Jones’s offer to comedy-goers, in his own words, and it’s fine in principle. But if there’s no food for thought, the jokes have to hit big. And tonight, they don’t. By the end, it’s clear even Jones doesn’t think he’s had a good gig, protesting to his audience that we’ve been the most “tepid” of his tour – and musing aloud about how little the Guardian critic will have enjoyed it. In fact, the Guardian critic enjoyed the Mancunian’s company well enough – camp and ebullient, he’d be hard not to like – but wished for a better show: for more substantial content, some structure, or for jokes that developed beyond first (or – credit where it’s due – sometimes second) base.
What we get is a seemingly formless meander through the 32-year-old’s life, taking in his family, a stint on Dancing on Ice and the social climb that has taken him from a “bin fire” Manchester suburb to the fringes of well-heeled Cheshire. For that, he has a new relationship to thank, and there’s a fun routine here about the encounter between his “hugger” boyfriend and Josh’s very non-tactile dad. Another choice gag late in the show, about “bumming”, sharply contrasts his postcoital feelings depending on whether he’s played “bummer” or “bummee”.
But elsewhere, pickings are slim. Too often, so-called jokes are just vaguely amusing things that have happened to Jones – like being hit on by a woman in Cancún. He makes a great play about his supposedly transgressive “nonce” joke, but the gag itself barely registers as such – it’s just a setup, a situation, with no punchline or incident. Then there’s his digression into the slave trade, with its drive-by ignorance of local context (he ascribes to a Glasgow a history free of colonial guilt) and very underwhelming payoff.
Wrapping up in under an hour, this is a vanishingly insubstantial set, then, without the craft or quality of gags that might redeem that flimsiness. Far from being got at for tepidness, I’d say tonight’s audience deserves credit for its discernment.
• At Monkey Barrel Edinburgh, on 4 December. Then touring to April.
