Pope Benedict: Bond Villain

Abie Philbin Bowman certainly gives a good title. The controversial Dublin comic brought Jesus: The Guantanamo Years to Edinburgh in 2006 and this year returns under a similarly inflammatory banner with Pope Benedict: Bond Villain.

If only everything that came out of his mouth was as funny as what he scribbles down for his Fringe programme entry. The wonderful headline concept is tossed away in two short bursts near the beginning and the half-hour point. Basically he doesn’t like James Bond because the spy seems a bit posh, but he reckons the Pope could, you know, be a really good baddy because of his German accent and Nazi past.

So far, so predictable. Much of the rest of the set is concerned with stripping the power away from religions and institutions by simply refusing to believe in them, using a familiar Monty Python riff as a starting point. Cleese and co’s dialogue, quoted verbatim, are the most insightful lines of the entire show.

As a concept it’s fine but many of the contentions in Bowman’s po-faced preaching don’t bear scrutiny, nevermind guffaws. Drawing a parallel between God and money and praying for the end of both is frustratingly shallow schoolboy philosophy. Meanwhile, an excited claim that he’s “the only comedian to have been taken seriously by Osama Bin Laden” is backed up with only the flimsiest of evidence.

Ending on a mawkish note, this is one standup set which isn’t half as clever as it clearly believes it is.