Recent headlines about artificial intelligence’s 10% chance of wiping out humanity are a particularly on-theme gift for Russell Howard. However, AI is just one of several existential concerns buzzing in the background and perpetually re-emerging in this seriously accomplished show, the doom-laden mood music he hopes to diminish with a collective chorus of Sweet Caroline.
Tonight’s audience turned against his seemingly irrefutable premise that Neil Diamond’s pub anthem unites the United Kingdom, choosing Scottish separatism instead with demands that he sing The Proclaimers, a situation he indulged with good grace, patience and some impressive crowd wrangling.
Howard has always sought to unify his audiences, to find collective humanity in little moments of eccentricity and stupidity. And his two-year-old son now joins his mother and brother in providing him with some quirky anecdotes close to home, as he pitches in with his own curious but compelling attraction to Tom Daley. Still, there’s no denying that at 46, Howard’s worldview has become a little jaded.
Withering of anyone who puts their so-called “neurospiciness” front and centre in their personality, not least when employed as a defence for the errant behaviour of Gregg Wallace or Elon Musk, he’s especially dismissive of the Edinburgh Fringe as somewhere that indulges egocentric sensitivity, imploring the worst offenders to “just tell a joke”.
He’s somewhat disingenuous in his characterisation of the festival, as it remains somewhere you can see some of the most cutting edge and daring comedy. But when he also berates comics who mine and dump their personal trauma on crowds, he’s coming from a place of fierce conviction. Alluding to the loss of his second son just after he was born, news of which has just emerged, it certainly affords his arguments potency, as he refuses to dwell upon his pain.
More problematically, he suggests that energy shouldn’t be wasted mocking Leonardo DiCaprio for his penchant for much younger women. Not when there are bigger, more pressing problems in the world. And ultimately, of course, he’s right. But surely its possible to have a view on both?
No big deal though. His occasionally contrarian and even mildly reactionary stances in an otherwise overwhelmingly progressive worldview make Howard seem more authentic, as he pushes back against the holier-than-thou interviewing that found him being asked to condemn the lack of ethnic diversity in Copenhagen.
As he despairingly points out, sometimes it’s ok to not have an opinion on something, just to be a struggling human being. He might retain his boyish good looks and love of the goofiest stupidity. Yet his growing irritability, allied to his refusal to suffer the very worst fools and bigots, suits him.
His belief in that which unites us, laughing at things we perhaps shouldn’t, has been an enduring thread throughout his career. And in the face of big issues such as war, climate crisis and the creeping rise of AI, it remains a worthy if simplistic message.
What really sells it is the verve and pace of his routines, tightly written, even with topical inserts, superb observations acted out with his trademark vim and vigour.
With great balance, he can hail the biological wonders of the female breast in all of its life-nourishing majesty and still acknowledge the instinctive weakness of his gender for boobs without coming across as overly laddish or lairy.
So mainstream that he’s even got the obligatory colonoscopy routine of the middle-aged male comic, Howard nevertheless renders his own distinctive. And he remains just about the best we’ve got in this country at upbeat, life-affirming stand-up.
Tours until 29 November 2026 | Image: Contributed
