A Different Class

Title: Ed Byrne: A Different Class
Rating: 3/5
Genre: Stand-up Comedy
Starring: Ed Byrne

I expect this will be a comparatively short review (how much can you really write about a stand up comedian?), it is the depths of Glasgow that gets plundered by Dublin’s Ed Byrne, filled with a dry wit and very natural delivery to his numerous punchlines as he meanders and gets off course from where the segment was originally heading. Focusing on his own status in the world, that class between middle and working, for example the internal conflict between eating pheasant (very middle class) despite knowing it killed itself in your back garden (very homeless-pikey class), settling in to his comfortable status as ‘that bloke;’ recognised, but nobody quite knows where from.

Mocking WAG’s, emo’s, Goths, DVD piracy warnings and Michael Jackson (without resorting to simply paedophile jokes), as well as talking of his own personal life; the cruelties of his recent wife and the irritations of planning a wedding, his humour is very observational and in striving to please as many as possible, there will naturally be segments impossible for some to relate to. The section on piracy speaking truths whilst the obsession with WAGs falling largely on deaf ears, but at almost two hours long the main drawback to this is perhaps a lack of momentum as a result, but impressively it never seems to happen.

Instead, I find my major gripe simply with the quality of the material at hand; he will consistently throw in tasteful observational humour, but at no point does he get beyond the mild ‘warm-up’ style of jokes, there is no set-up for a big finish or belly laughs in store, simply a constant chuckling. Then there is the incessant use of repetition, the ‘of course I thought of that later’ pun set up early in the set and re-used over and over well beyond the point of it being amusing. But he isn’t another idiotic funny man, and whilst he doesn’t tackle the ‘serious’ topics his observations are rarely off the mark resulting a genuine interest in what he has to say as a charismatic entertainer as well as the comedian. There is certainly worse out there, but he doesn’t feel like he’s pushing himself here; it all feels a bit ‘middle of the road,’ trying to appeal to a wide a crowd as possible but ultimately failing to take things far enough.