Carl Donnelly: Now That's What I Call Carl Donnelly Vol 6

Carl Donnelly tells us that his dad is not a sharer when it comes to his emotions. He is a man who would rather talk about the football than deal with feelings. His son, as we know, is quite the opposite. The way in which Donnelly conveys those feelings, however, is arguably as fixed as his father's attitudes - three or four yarns delivered at a near unrelenting pace. But then, why break a pattern that has been so successful?

As the title suggests, this year's show is a development on the hard time he has been having post-marital breakup, an event he touched on last year. Going to India was part of his plan to find his way back. Sounds like such a hackneyed journey doesn't it? But in Donnelly's hands, the trip feels like an adventurous night you might have in south London—finding out-of-the-way drinking dens and so forth—barring the odd free-roaming farmyard cow.

His closing scrape, which is set near Birmingham, is a classic example of Donnelley's sense of adventure leading him astray; this time among suburbanites rather too desperate to let their hair down. He over-runs the punchline somewhat, but it's a deftly layered anecdote nonetheless. The disappointing filling in the sandwich is the tale of drinking Ayahuasca, the shamanic, hallucinogenic Peruvian tea. Like the tea itself, the preparation of the anecdote is fastidious. In this case the end result is disappointing on both levels.