Kevin Bridges Review

We’d heard he was good, we’d heard he was confident, and judging by the queue that wound up the stairs and into the bar, so had a lot of people. So the bar is set pretty high for Kevin Bridges, but he is unphased. He walks to the microphone and does the usual warm up; asks us how we’re doing, and yet somehow had the room in uproar in less than a minute. And this was a room soaked from the rain in hot, uncomfortable seats. I don’t how he does it, but it came as naturally to him as breathing. He easily charms the crowd with his banter, exchanging stories back and forth, seamlessly weaving in his material. He picks stuff we’re all familiar with, ably mocking the rough side of Scottish life and dancing close to the border of offensiveness, always staying the right side and never flinching.

But what he can mostly be lauded for was both his creative imagination, bringing fresh life to familiar ground, and his skill in drawing bags of material from each in his unending stream of ideas. He has received a serious amount of good press from the moment he hit the circuit at just seventeen, and I can now see why. A great act.

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