This is the sort of discovery the Fringe should be all about, a fresh, fearless young singer, songwriter, and performer whose artistic potential is scary. In fact, Philip Jeays can be pretty scary already. His songs combine the French's love for macabre storytelling with the European art-song tradition (Jacques Brel's shadow hovers throughout then materialises in the finale's mad last tangle in Paris) and a very English eccentricity.

By turns vulnerable, vitriolic, and cruelly observant, Jeays's carefully honed lyrics come crisply and often comically to life through a theatrical, beautifully judged delivery, partly Peter Hammill, partly Hugh Grant but mostly a snivelling, hectoring, gloriously cursing persona of Jeays's own devising.