Edinburgh Fringe season is fast approaching and as such we see a lot of ‘work in progress’ shows where comedians practice new material in prep for the show they ultimately take over the water.  I’ve never been to one of these shows before, but on Tuesday night I found myself in the Green Room of the Black Box watching North Down’s own Shane Todd hone his craft.  Having been more used to his alter ego Mike McGoldrick on YouTube of late and it being over a year since I last saw him live, I was interested to see how things had progressed for Shane Todd in the world of stand up.

Todd is a very funny man and I found myself chuckling and laughing for the whole time he was on stage. However this was a show of two halves, the first half being a lot of hilarious NI based antidotes that had me snorting with laughter (but wondering how this would play out to an Edinburgh Fringe audience), I particularly enjoyed a story about his dad helping him  through his MOT.

The second half was more general humour and seemed to me to be the stuff he was less sure of, I guessed these were the bits that he was trying out on us.  Some of it was hilarious, some drew titters, and a story about him winning a raffle at a GAA club had the guts of a good joke but lulled too much between the funny bits. I thoroughly enjoyed the set however and would be interested to see what the finished product for the Fringe comes out like.

The main part of the show and the titular reference is about his brush with death recently, or at least a severe fainting, and is a great piece to centre the show around, there are some real laugh out loud bits and it makes for a great story.  Shane Todd is one of the top NI comics I’ve seen over the past  two years, he’s confident and self-assured and he will make you laugh.  Also considering how well his Holywood compatriots Jamie Dornan and Rory McIlroy have done recently  (he assures us they call themselves the three amigos), I’m sure it will not be long until we see Shane Todd scale such lofty heights. Well, maybe not quite those heights but pretty high I‘m sure.

Another date has been added this Tuesday and you can get all the info here. Follow Shane on Twitter and Facebook.

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Chris Caldwell

Author: Chris Caldwell

Chris Caldwell at your service! My favourite things are eating and Theatre, I have 2 small sons called Alex and Max who are more mustard than Hellmann's. I spend my days trying to wrangle them and exploring my favourite city - BELFAST! My favourite films are horror, my fav music is metal and my favourite Beatle is Ringo, mainly his work on Thomas the Tank.