Review by Josh Jones – The Mancunian comedian meanders through a vanishingly insubstantial set | platform

‘CJust a joke and you don’t have to think.” This is Josh Jones’ show for comedy-goers, as he puts it, and it’s good in principle. But if there’s no food for thought, the jokes are bound to have a big impact. And tonight, they didn’t. In the end, even Jones clearly didn’t think he’d given a good performance, protesting to his audience that we’d been the most “tepid” on his tour – and musing aloud about how little the Guardian critic enjoyed it. In fact, the newspaper critic enjoyed it. The Guardian is in good enough company with the Mancunian – it would be hard not to like it – it’s campy and lively – but he wished for better presentation: for more substantive content, or some structure, or for jokes that developed beyond the first base (or – credit where it’s due – sometimes the second).

What we get is a seemingly formless journey through the 32-year-old’s life, with his family, a stint on Dancing on Ice and the social climbing that took him from the Manchester suburb of Penn Fire to the affluent fringes of Cheshire. Because of this, he has a new relationship to thank, and there’s a fun routine here about the encounter between his “cuddly” friend and Josh’s father, who can’t touch at all. Another gag option late in the show, about “nagging”, contrasts sharply with his post-coital feelings depending on whether he played “naughty” or “naughty”.

But elsewhere, the choices are slim. More often than not, the so-called jokes are just vaguely amusing things that happened to Jones — like being assaulted by a woman in Cancun. He makes a great play about his supposedly offending “nonce” joke, but the gag itself hardly registers as such—it’s merely an intrigue, a situation, without a punchline or incident. Then there is his digression on the slave trade, with its blatant ignorance of local context (he credits Glasgow with a history free of colonial guilt) and its extremely disappointing payoff.

The film wraps up in less than an hour, and it’s a fairly insubstantial set piece, without the craft or quality of the gags that could make up for this weakness. Apathy aside, I’d say tonight’s audience deserves credit for their acumen.