Comedy / cerebral comedy
Robin Ince: Blooming Buzzing Confusion
“I’m an hour and a half in and I still haven’t shown you the scan of my brain – and that’s the beginning of the show.”
This aside, deep into the second half of the evening, tells you all you need to know about Robin Ince in general, and about his latest show in particular. In typical Ince style, ‘Blooming Buzzing Confusion’ is hyper-articulate, thought-provoking and splendidly messy stand-up, Ince’s mind pogoing at bewildering speeds from the 1960s LSD culture via train toilet etiquette to the part of our mind that imagines doing unspeakable things.
As for the brain scan, even though when it does finally pop up on screen it proves a little incidental (beyond the fact that he’s got a big one, you know), it forms the leitmotif for the whole evening – which, as much as you can summarise any of Ince’s splendidly digressive shows, is devoted to the sheer wonder of the human brain and all that it can achieve.
In fact, the pre-show blurb promised a discussion of two leading thinkers on the human mind, Marshall ‘global village’ McLuhan and Stanley ‘controversial obedience experiments’ Milgram. The fact that he doesn’t get onto either of these should come as no great surprise – Ince’s freeform delivery style has him going off at several tangents per minute. He reluctantly wrapped up at 11pm, and you can only suppose he would eventually have got on to the advertised programme at about 3 in the morning.
This quickfire barrage of musings, anecdotes, revelations and insights requires his audience to keep up with him – but, if you can hang on by your fingernails, you’re in for a fascinating, life-affirming and, yes of course, very witty ride.
The fact that Ince manages to mix comedy and curiosity, to make you laugh and cram your head with mental notes of topics to research, shows him to be about the best in the business at this comedy-with-brains malarkey. With his careful, precise diction, colourful vocabulary and theatrical delivery style, Ince is a fine comic to watch – but what comes through strongest is his sheer giddy excitement at life and all it contains.
Robin Ince was at the Comedy Box at the Hen & Chicken, Bristol on Friday 17 October.
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
