Marcus Brigstocke - God Collar

Marcus Brigstocke plays to a packed-out audience in the Merchant City’s Old Fruitmarket, many of whom are expecting an hour of bite-sized satirical set-pieces, situated within the confines of the BBC fayre he has become most recently recognisable for.

What we get was an extremely well-constructed deliberation on the existence or non-existence of some form of God. Whilst it has to be said that in the main, Brigstocke stuck with The Big Three – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – this can be easily explained by his own musings on the relative scarcity of stories about Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs in our national press and therefore consciousness. Although the existential musing on God couldn't help but lead into some poignant musings on death, Brigstocke, knowing the value of a well-timed knob-gag, easily balances mortality-based food for thought with the belly laughs needed to make it go down easy.

His lighter material regarding how having children has affected his views on the value of belief seemed notably to go down best with the majority of his Saturday-night audience, but this was nonetheless altogether a sharp, smart and hilarious look at faith in the modern world.