Ed Night: Anthem for Doomed Youth

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At just 21 years of age, Ed Night has no right to be as good as he is. The ancient guild of comedy elders has deigned that you must have been performing for at least ten years before you even begin to know what you’re doing, and unless Night has been getting up on stage unbeknownst to promoters since he was an extremely precocious 11-year-old, he may be the subject of some kind of Freaky Friday-style switcheroo with a much older and wiser comic.

Obviously if you look at the subject matter covered, where topics of Anthem for Doomed Youth include looking for jobs on Craigslist, Flow Dan being an artist from Night’s youth ,and the gentrification of his native Streatham, you'll get a better idea of the young man before you. Disarmingly quiet yet full of confidence, he takes a measured look at what he calls the sloganisation of society, where everything has been distilled to snappy sayings that define (and sometimes redefine) entire subcultures.

A lack of experience shows when he delivers a callback to a section of his act that he forgot to perform, but he recovers well and handles a difficult, very drunken heckler with the grace and wit of a 20-year veteran. He may feel his generation has been doomed by that which came before it, but if Night keeps dolling out intelligent and insightful commentary on the state of the modern world then the future looks very bright indeed for this particular youth.