Edward Aczel Doesn't Exist

With minimal fanfare, Edward Aczel shuffles onstage and plants both hands on hips. His mic stand is too high. He doesn’t bother adjusting it. Quiet, overweight, balding, sweaty and shambolic, he cuts a mightily unimpressive figure, kicking off with a mumbled procession of unrelated facts and trivia to demonstrate “how the mind can wander when you’re nervous”.

Such an inauspicious start might spell death for any other comedian, but for Aczel, master of the understated, lo-fi, “anti-comedy” school of standup, this faux-naîf funny business has become an artform. Except these days, without that vital weapon of surprise, it’s all a bit familiar.

The conceit for this year’s show is simple: Aczel, knowingly referencing the fact that his downbeat shtick isn’t exactly TV gold, runs through a series of programme proposals that might raise his profile, including one about a time-travelling ACAS mediator who visits notorious industrial disputes of the past, and a show called Ed Aczel’s Warning, May Contain Nuts, where celebrities dress up as squirrels. These, and his repeated application of harebrained business jargon and management techniques to comedy (via his “creative process flow PowerPoint presentation”), raise the biggest laughs until a prolonged sequence involving a box of hats and three Frenchmen called Pierre outstays its welcome.

Yes, it’s a refreshing antidote to the egocentric, skinny jean-sporting school of standup, but you sense Aczel needs to refresh his own template a touch, so when he closes with typical flamboyance (“um, so that’s the end of my show”) a large chunk of the audience seem quite relieved.