Review: Matt Hutchinson: Hostile

If there's a textbook way to gain audience trust at the top, to say in big bold letters, "I've got this," then Matt Hutchinson might have found it. As we file in, he's hunched over a set of decks, cutting beats like a pro. The lights dim and his DJing becomes VJing, mixed-up Pathé footage showing West Indians arriving on the Empire Windrush – British citizens settling in Britain. It's a moving start: heartbreaking because we know the state-sponsored hostility that met the hopes and dreams of these young men and women, some of them ex-servicemen; exciting, because look what Hutchinson is doing with that heritage right now.

By and large, he honours that well-won trust. DJ Hutchinson gets good laughs from the contrast between his appearance, the idea of him as "the voice of the street" and the reality, namely that he's an NHS doctor who went to a good school, whose mum drove him to and from DJ gigs, and whose closest brush with the law was fruit-based and thoroughly middle class. Unsurprisingly, Dr H's bedside manner is top notch. He's a total sweetie with a very cute baby and some great jokes.

But it's a fairly ragtag bunch of jokes, and his segues between them are as choppy as his beats. Phrases like "but...y'know," work overtime to guide him through an hour that doesn't quite have enough solid gear to fill it. A couple of musical jokes make for nice contrast but the fact that the vocals are recorded suggests he doesn't have the confidence in them that they need to make them fly.