Rory O'Keeffe: Monoglot

Search for Rory O'Keeffe online, and you'll find there's two of them. One blogs on issues such as war, refugees and international law. The other is this afternoon's host. The contrast is a stark one: from his opening, offstage character monologue from the point of view of the microphone, right up to his final multi-lingual callback, there is absolutely nothing of substance here. Our boy Rory is absolutely a purveyor of flimflam.

And, in truth, O'Keeffe never professes to do anything else. Indeed, the surfeit of material based on the hit nineties book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and the hit nineties/noughties TV show Friends firmly positions him as anything but a topical comedian. Instead, O'Keeffe revels in the silliness of being young, slightly effete, middle class, and from Islington. "The strongest thing about me is my password," he confides.

But it's fine flimflam that he deals in. Within this stately pleasure dome, O'Keeffe does a good job of showcasing his intelligence and imagination. Punchlines come from odd angles, and set pieces have nice shape and weight, producing satisfying bursts of laughter. An extended sporting metaphor around "errors" in comedy gives us a lovely running joke that's worth the slightly forced setup. All of this is wrapped around a loose theme of language and a love of words – both real and made up. It's all sufficiently well-structured to make this a perfectly enjoyable hour of comedy. Nothing more; nothing less.