Nick Doody: Tour of Doody

Scenes of global horror flash before the eyes of the audience, while correspondingly dramatic music blares from the speakers. Suddenly a manically grinning Keith Harris pops up on the screen wielding a sinister-looking Cuddles the monkey: "Coincidence?" screams the tagline that follows. While this crude montage raises chuckles from the audience's drunker members, it unfortunately sets the tone of the returning comic's show, which combines crass political satire with some rather daft jokes.

Nick Doody's material is drawn straight from the news; the story of British schoolteacher, Gillian Gibbons, is the show's rather obvious linchpin, and becomes a handy stick with which to beat his latest target: Islam. “I'm going to assume you get the reference,” says Doody after cracking his first joke about Mohammed, the fatefully named bear. “Don't name a soft toy or you might get your head cut off.”

It's easy to take a pop at Islam, as Doody himself admits, so to compensate he's decided to go that little bit further than most. Cue a series of jokes about veils in schools, sexually frustrated fundamentalists, and suicide bombers – none particularly edgy or original – that make Doody seem as ignorant as the Daily Mail reader he successfully mocks later in the set.

But the comic raises his game when ridiculing aspects of English culture. Doody's observations about British blokes abroad, and his musings on the origins of depressing-sounding Yorkshire place names, are hilarious. However even his stronger material would benefit from more accomplished delivery – Doody simply tries too hard, and fails to impress.