Ian stone

To spend an hour listening to his jokes is a guilty pleasure: he’s like a higher brow version of Roy Chubby Brown, in the best possible sense

Review by Dominic Hinde | 17 Aug 2007

Ian Stone is an angry man, so angry in fact that his own mother complains about him in his local paper. In a world full of irritable thirty-something comedians from London who stack BBC panel shows it is easy to tire of jokes about taking kids shopping and the cost of items for the home. With Stone however you get a higher plane of irritability.

He uses his Jewishness as a license to safely knock Israel but is equally at home laying into Islamists, the Catholic Church and Diana. There’s even a Chris Langham joke for good measure. He says that he supports gay adoption because he likes the idea of having one around the house for the kids to play with. To spend an hour listening to his jokes is a guilty pleasure: he’s like a higher brow version of Roy Chubby Brown, in the best possible sense.

He jokes about anyone and everything which you might find mildly annoying, and his argument that the Middle East could be solved by making the West Bank all seater is surprisingly convincing – it worked at Arsenal after all. If you happen to be Israeli, Islamic, religious in any way or simply easily offended then you are probably better off going to see Nicholas Parsons. If on the other hand you wish to pack yourself into a sweaty underground room for an hour this man is as good a reason as any.