"THAT," says James Sherwood, fingers still hovering above his just-caressed keyboard, "is a perfect cadence. I sometimes play them at the end of my jokes. Why? Because they're perfect jokes."
That may sound arrogant, but by-and-large Sherwood has
a point. His entire set, from humorous songs to witty repartee, is beautifully, painstakingly sculpted. There's no flab and no filler: everything is meticulously judged and delivered with the flinty discipline of a highly organised mind.
Trouble is, comedy doesn't really work like a precision timepiece – it's more like a bumblebee in flight, chaotic and unfathomable.
Sherwood sings a series of brilliant songs, and outlines his "rules of songwriting" by brilliantly spoofing everyone from Paul Simon to Guns 'N' Roses. He indulges in some brilliant pedantry concerning David Cameron's "appalling" use of grammar, and then he goes on to talk about how difficult it is to put hecklers down in song, before giving some brilliant examples of how he might go about it.
You can't help wishing that somebody would actually heckle him, though, just to introduce a random element into the proceedings.
• Until 24 August
The full article contains 204 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
