Carl Donnelly: Relax Everyone, It's Carl Donnelly!

He’s tried edgy – that didn’t work. He’s tried topical – that didn’t work either. But in today’s incarnation, Carl Donnelly is in his element. He is the quintessential modern idler, revelling in his own idiocy as he saunters through one of the most impossibly effortless anecdote-based sets at the Festival.

You probably already know someone like Donnelly. You met him post-pub on a battered couch at 4am, reminiscing about a contest at the Pick ‘n’ Mix counter – which, it turns out, took place yesterday. At 27, his is a life of forward rolls, hide-and-seek and drinking to the point of internal bleeding (“which is fucking cool”): it’s all very enviable. He’s a welcome break from the more obnoxious acts out there, capable of neither causing nor taking offence – when he riffs with the audience, he’s unfailingly playful and knows exactly when to stop. If by any chance this isn’t simply the product of natural talent, his manner and timing are studied to perfection.

The single flaw in this otherwise fantastic show is that it’s perhaps a little too innocuous. Edinburgh audiences have become accustomed to schadenfreude, to shock, to being charmed into laughing at something they know they shouldn’t. It’s something of a missed opportunity here, since by the end, the audience has grown so fond of Donnelly that he could spout filth and slander and still back away without a scratch. Though this precludes a truly hysterical reception, it’s a consistently funny hour — low-key without ever being dull — and it delivers Donnelly’s promise of “truth and silliness” with aplomb.