Here’s the premise: Gary’s just back from Iraq (gutted that his tan’s already faded) where, with the other lads in the tank, he was involved in the military’s ‘hearts and minds’ campaign, i.e. to convince the locals that their occupiers aren’t all bad. Prior to his tour, Gary grew up on an Edinburgh scheme, ‘wi loadsa radges, d’ya ken?’ The collision between these two aspects of the character has great comic potential, but Greg McHugh’s character-stand up set doesn’t quite pull it off.
There are funny and original takes on Iraq, such as Gary’s horribly bungled attempts to win over locals with sweets and kitten-rescuing. Bush and Saddam portrayed as neighbours squaring up on the scheme is also very well done.
However, McHugh doesn’t exploit the character’s wartime experiences as much as he could, and falls back on much weaker and more predictable material about stand-up comedians and Dundee. Worse than this, many of the early jokes are poor examples of the ‘edgy, offensive’ approach, about down-syndrome kids, alcoholics and paedophiles, and it is here that the direction of the set is unclear. Is McHugh emphasising the problems with the military expecting insensitive and uninformed Gary to play the role of an ambassador in Iraq? In this case, McHugh doesn’t go far enough in causing offense, as the audience is laughing along with the down-syndrome jokes, not shocked into thinking about their responses. The effect is a character of two halves: bad, traditional stand-up and funny, ground-level insights into Iraq. These halves could be reconciled, but McHugh will need to hone his set substantially.
2/5
Steve Sinclair
