Is there a better no-frills standup at work today than Kevin Bridges? You’d struggle to find a more unfussily funny demonstration of the art form’s traditional virtues than at the Glaswegian’s new touring set. It’s a consistently laugh-out-loud suite of observational material on subjects comics have addressed since time immemorial: nostalgia, marital dispute, the latest cultural trends – alongside, as Ben Elton used to have it, a little bit of politics, too. Bridges really does have the X factor, and – without him ever seeming to stretch himself – Here If You Need Me is a steamroller 75 minutes of standup.
For me, it needed to be, after being hit by a £10 – 10 pounds! – cloakroom charge because my innocuous wee bag (a notebook, a novel, a pair of glasses) was apparently too incendiary to be allowed into the venue. Oh that Bridges would turn his satirical eye on that racket. But the show starts with more obvious targets: Donald Trump, whose “negotiating” techniques our host burlesques in a violent dialogue with his electrician; and Benjamin Netanyahu, pausing before another act of destruction to check out Bridges’ Instagram feed.
