Sam Fletcher - Drawn Out Jokes

You know a show is going to be daft when "Eh Cumpari," the world's daftest song, is playing when you take your seat. Sam Fletcher doesn't disappoint: with his second Fringe show he has produced a masterpiece of sustained daftness. He sets the tone with a charming skit featuring an imaginary St. Bernard, and the daftness escalates. He shows off his speed-typing and his knowledge of the London A to Z, argues with Siri, and fields occasional calls from work, who want him to email over a report (unstarted) on the UK's laser industry. Fletcher's persona is that of an endearing geek, Mr Muscle physiognomy accentuated by big glasses halfway down his nose; he stands proprietorially behind a desk and positions whimsical drawings under a camera hooked up to a screen behind him.

The show is structured extremely cleverly. If you could chart all Fletcher's nonsense on a spreadsheet you would end up with an intricate mosaic of structural callbacks, probably in the shape of Morgan Freeman's face (he has a thing about Freeman). He reveals the extent of his ingenuity with a delirious final set-piece, accompanied by "Eh Cumpari" again, which pulls everything together like a cat's cradle made of silly string. A few jokes fall flat here and there; and while a few things are bound to malfunction in a low-budget show that's absolutely reliant on an overhead projector and an iPhone, there are a couple of worrying moments when the wheels threaten to fall off altogether. But this is an absolutely delightful way to spend an hour.