Craig Campbell’s Thrilling Mic Hunt

The globe-trotting action man of standup has motorbiked, mountain-climbed and unsuccessfully vaulted electric fences in a bid to bring you some of the best laughs on the Fringe. Mission accomplished. This is a belly-aching hour in the company of a larger-than-life Devon-based Canadian whose ability to blow your hair back with a bellow of hilarity is backed-up by a wealth of worldly knowledge that alone is entertaining to behold.

Who’d have thought that Campbell knew so much about lifeboats, for instance? His inquisition of a latecomer from Dorset who works for the RNLI leads him off on a noisy tip about the petrifying unsinkability of a certain rescue vessel. Travel and modes of transport feature heavily. Best of all, his story about riding a Japanese bullet train. He desperately strives to change an officious ticket-inspector's culturally hard-wired mind as to the possibility of him making a train connection at Tokyo—route from platform to platform pre-planned and tested—in under three minutes. “You RUN?”

Campbell’s chat about “pureeing” his bent and bandaged finger in a climbing accident isn’t exactly the best preamble to convincing audience members to get involved with his charity bid to perform the world’s highest ever comedy show (altitude-wise, that is) on Everest next year. But it’s a suitably earnest and adventurous end to this tirelessly fun and good-natured show, as capped by Campbell waiting outside the door to shake people’s hands with his good fingers as they leave. Handy chance to get a nagging question answered – he did make that train connection, you know.