Frankie Boyle

Frankie Boyle’s sold-out offering, Morons, I Can Heal You, opens with an advertisement for "Real Edinburgh Tours." Being as Glaswegian as a deep-fried chocolate bar, the ensuing minutes are hardly trailblazing: they’re as parochial and lazy as they are witty. Thankfully, when the star of the show strolls into the spotlight, usual cynical service is resumed.

An awkward presence, his fame seems almost an issue of embarrassment and this discomfort permeates some audience baiting. But Boyle is an experienced performer – its been eleven years since he won the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award. He knows to quit when he’s ahead and he rapidly returns to the material that is finally giving him a deserved breakthrough, pointing his razor sharp arrow at contemporary headlines. It’s cutting stuff and not for the faint-hearted, particularly if you’re English, gay or disabled. But among some brilliant new material, it's a little unfortunate that numerous pre-used jokes get an outing: fans of the BBC’s Mock the Week might find themselves chewing on their fingers in an attempt to avoid beating Boyle to the punchline.

That said, whereas detractors dismiss him as mean-spirited, witnessing him in front of a packed and expectant festival audience casts him in a somewhat more balanced light. His material is unflinchingly caustic but it has a nervous, generous energy acting as its driving force: he retains a surprising likeability, his scattergun giggle puncturing any sense of aloofness. So long as you are willing to pay lip service to some tried and tested material, it's this mesmerising skill which allows Boyle to re-define the boundaries of decency.