Alun Cochrane: Jokes, Life and Jokes about Life.

Alun Cochrane’s wonderfully engaging show 'Jokes, Life and Jokes about Life' graced The Stand last week to build upon a successful Edinburgh Fringe run. The premise is simple; Cochrane finds his most appealing gags in simple day-to-day interactions and in a wide range of communications between people. However it becomes clear that this is not merely observational humour, Cochrane shows a real awareness of the humour evident within these anecdotes and at points we see evidence of metacomedy. As Cochrane elucidates after an exaggerated sat nav story, "Well we all know a sat nav wouldn’t say that but I wanted to give you a little extra laugh."

Cochrane knows his craft quite well and while most of the show is straight-forward anecdotal stand-up, he also has a large Tupperware box of ‘Jokes’ sitting to one side of him throughout the performance. He explains that these are filled with one-liners - its his experiment to see how successful short witticisms can be. Reading each out and allowing the audience to decide whether they deserve a replay at his later shows or deletion, Cochrane performs a broad range of jokes that fall equally on both ends of the spectrum.

Cochrane is an innovative comedian who continually finds new material without having to look too far, and he also deals exceptionally with the only heckler of the night (prompted by talk of heckles no doubt) showing his quick-fire wit is on par with his scripted material. However his box of one-liners was maybe somewhat overdone, especially considering their hit-or-miss nature. Nonetheless Cochrane shows impressive finesse and is well worth a look.