Robert White's Outrageously Peculiar Organ

Resplendent in electric blue boaters, matching tanktop and jet blonde hair, Robert White takes to tonight’s stage like an absurdist Tintin preparing for adventure. As you might imagine from Britain’s only Asperger’s comedian, White’s stand-up is far from conventional and most of this this year's show verges gloriously on out-and-out comic anarchy.

Rushing into the crowd in the opening seconds, he blares his trumpet into the ears of unsuspecting audience members before scuttling off stage without a word of explanation. Later he forces a poor bald man to join him on stage, first humiliating him, then grabbing his testicles, and finally cajoling him to dance the Hokey Cokey to the tune of coconut shells.

If this sounds a bit bewildering, that’s because it is. Deeply. But nestled in among the chaos are also frequent signs of a hugely imaginative comic brain. A skit explaining how different celebrities ‘edit word documents’ displays a surreal talent for wordplay and a set of keyboard jingles parodying the royal family is brilliantly dark.  Inevitably with such a wide array of ideas, not all White’s material succeeds. His excessive preoccupation with gay rape jokes wears thin towards the end and some of his shouty outbursts are genuinely a bit scary.     

Nonetheless, if you’re looking for originality, White has it in abundance. Gloriously re-igniting the spirit of anarchy at the Fringe, he is surely an early contender for The Malcolm Hardee Award.