Amateur Transplants: Adam Kay's Bum Notes

Comedian and pianist Adam Kay used to be an anaesthetist. He even jokes about what anaesthetists do all day while surgeons carry out the real work – and wonders whether he’s more gainfully employed now as a comic. In any case, his years of learning are clear to see in his effortlessly clever song parodies and his blunt, self-aware, self-deprecating style.

Although he's got just two sides to his act—his songs and his short-form stand-up, which often amounts to nothing more than a few comments between singing—it’s all so smoothly presented and well written that we’re hardly aware of a slight lack of variety.

Parodying everyone from Lady Gaga to The Jam, Bonnie Tyler to Chesney Hawkes, he concocts often filthy new words for their well-worn songs, but always with practised worthsmithery. He warns us at the start that the show does involve a lot of swearing—and that’s quite apart from his diarrhoea and spunk gags—but it’s his sheer inventiveness in his foul language and the bluntness with which he discusses bodily matters that make it such fun.

Yes, there’s plenty of bad taste – jokes about paedophilia, the menopause, stuttering. And his Matthew Kelly song comes across as pretty cheap. But he’s also painfully honest about his search for a boyfriend and his own failings – only to deflate the pathos with a cutting remark or sly observation. It’s an erudite hour, but also a highly entertaining one.