Alfie Brown: -ism

Assembly George Square until Aug 31

Three stars

A shave and a haircut hasn’t harmed Alfie Brown: he’s a good-looking guy with a twinkle in his eye, a guaranteed comedy TV star… until he begins talking and you realise that rapid-fire gags and sofa-comfy observations just aren’t his thing. Brown takes his time travelling to the deeper points that have to be made and if that means there’s a lower rate of laughs in his show, then so be it. His routine about a friend’s new vegan-poet boyfriend is too judgemental for an opening segment and very possibly sets the audience at arm’s length for the rest of the show. But when he dissects the twists and turns of his personal life or wrestles with left-wing complacency, the momentum starts to build. He’s a man who will sacrifice a punchline in order to quote David Hume but, at the same time, have us laughing from the gut as the migrant crisis is analysed in the style of Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville on Sky Sports.

Alan Morrison