Neil Delamere - Crème Delamere

Irish comedian Neil Delamere has good home support at this Fringe. The inevitable "Who here is from Ireland?" question at the start of his show is met with a telling cheer from 90 per cent of the audience, while the 2 per cent English contingent remain resolutely tentative.

Delamere’s popularity with the Irish is due to his role as presenter of The Panel, a weekly RTE chat show, which has also featured fellow comedians Ed Byrne, Dara O’Briain and Andrew Maxwell.

Crème Delamere is based upon a holiday the comedian spent in Stockholm, getting kicked out of galleries and run over by trams and having awkward sex with a 6’2” Swedish stunner - something that involved the Bible and a phone book. These instances provide Delamere with excuses to go off on comedic tangents that are charmingly humourous and thankfully devoid of clichés but which are too disparate, sounding like a list of unrelated events, to create any real sense of a cohesive whole.

There are obvious signs of talent: the charm he works on the audience and an off-the-cuff joke involving a recently engaged couple, an old antique dealer, a policeman and a philosophy student sitting in the audience highlight a quick wit. And none of the comic's jokes fall flat, but at no point does Delamere raise the show above the safe, comfortable but ultimately unremarkable level where it stays.

The fact that Byrne and O’Briain have become household names on this side of the Irish Sea while Delamere remains a relatively unknown stand-up speaks volumes.