Neil Delamere: Ctrl Alt Delamere

At one point in his show, Neil Delamere asks himself what he's doing in Edinburgh. An established name in his native Ireland with regular television work and a sizeable following, he's performing to a relatively small crowd here. Moreover, there's no ostensible theme beyond him catching up on current events and developments in his life since he last graced the festival three years ago, all supplemented with the sort of masterful crowd work on which he's built so much of his reputation.

A fiercely quick ad-libber, who can easily keep a clutch of interactions on the go throughout, he is blessed on the night I see him with a retired priest and a man of Aztec origins among those who've come to the show. But all this only reinforces the impression of a tour date rather than a worthwhile Fringe show pushing him creatively.

As the host of a popular science show, Delamere gets to travel to some fairly random locations and delivers well-crafted anecdotes about being hit with extreme g-force in a centrifuge in Poland and bobsledding with young Germans, all mixed up with wry observations on his homeland that tend to portray it as a nation only belatedly embracing modernity.

There's a startling shift into filth when he bluntly asks, “What's up with deep throating in porn?” But it's all a part of an instinctive mischief that brilliantly theorises on why Willy Wonka is a Protestant, and had him and his mates masquerading as Catalans on his recent stag do to Barcelona.