How is it I’ve been watching stand-up for more than 20 years, including a decade of Fringe going, and I have never got round to seeing Andrew Maxwell. It must have been all those five-star reviews plastered across his posters. Yeah, life-changingly awesome stand-ups - who’d want to see that? But, as of last night, I broke my Maxwell duck and I can report the man is more than worthy of the frothing reviews. In fact, here comes another...He doesn’t even have us at hello, he has us from the moment he’s introducing himself from behind the curtain like an eejit - you can feel the comedic energy just waiting to burst out. And it does. Maxwell’s intro patter is faultless: ‘Ah, the same day I do the Fred MacAulay Show, I always get in a few low-flying angels,’ he says, referring to the fact his audience is skewing older tonight.He takes us everywhere in an hour, from the recent riots in England (‘Looting? Not in their heads - they were clicking and dragging’) to Scottish and Irish sectarianism (‘If you post bullets to someone, it suggests you have a gun. If you post a knife, it suggests... you used to have a knife’) and a grimly hilarious skit on junkies.He’s not all glib surface, either - there’s a palpable fury directed against the great and the good (Tony Blair is brilliantly described as a 'sun-kissed hustler') - and his repeated phrase, 'I’m so angry' is backed up with a mime that is more chilling than actually funny: he pulls his hoodie over his head and zips it up so you can’t see his face. In one second he cements an icon of our troubled times. And then moves onto Pippa Middleton’s arse. Class.Andrew Maxwell: insert gushing pull-out quote here. Or just slap another five stars on the poster.
