Tom Craine: Comfort Blanket

Gawky and self-effacing stand-up Tom Craine throws out warnings from the offset that this will be a reasonably tame hour of comedy: “We’ll probably use the word poo but no politics.” The ensuing set, relying rather too heavily on his genial manner and tepid anecdotes, doesn’t disappoint.

Having finally recognised, five years on, the oddity of replacing smoking with thumb sucking at the tender age of 22, Craine regales his audience with tales of the various self-comforting techniques he has employed over the years to make up for his lack of easy sociability. The comic’s feebleness is rewarded with a certain amount of tittering sympathy from a crowd generally wishing him well, but ultimately this is a set lacking the pace and drive necessary to keep the attention going through to the close.

That said, Craine is certainly a professional enough comic with well prepared and delivered material. At several junctures he displays a keen comic eye, particularly when it comes to the subject of feminism – his respect for women apparently extends to the point that he only has to list female achievements throughout the ages in order to bring himself to climax. But this is a rare gem in a set that often seems to drag.

Support act on Rhod Gilbert’s sell out tour this year, Craine has probably shown better form than this with the larger and more excitable audiences he would have met there. This first solo step into the unforgiving lights of Edinburgh, though a little lacklustre, does bear a certain amount of scrutiny; no doubt a promising career is in the offing.