Taking into account the sheer amount of posters and placards bearing Iain Stirling’s inquisitive countenance, one might expect that the quality of his show might prove to be similarly in excess. In Stirling’s case however, it seems that the amount of marketing given over to ones’ show is inversely proportional to how funny you are.
Stirling’s show starts off at a promising pace, with strong and sharp material about his nefarious plans to break into TV comedy. In a time when every other young, male comedian who sports inoffensive t-shirts is aiming for exactly the same thing – a spot on Mock the Week or Live at the Apollo – it was refreshing to see someone make light of their ambition and critique it.
Disappointingly, Stirling seemed determined throughout the rest of his set to provide exactly the sort of half-baked dull comedy that populates the aforementioned programming. Attempting to steer a course between the mainstream and the cool, he took on such gritty and daring subjects as how silly hipsters are and the fact that people swear more in Scotland, before moving on to the contrarian heights of much more posh Richmond is than Edinburgh.
His material on Scotland was particularly disappointing, since he devoted a good part of the show to an extended exposition of recycled material. It seemed as if Stirling had reservations about taking the easy option of playing to the home crowd, but decided to do it anyway. The decision wouldn’t have been quite so damning if this material hadn’t been done much better by much funnier comedians, but both Susan Calman and Frankie Boyle have mined aspects of Scottish culture for comic value before, and neither of them relied upon it in the same way that Stirling does.
This could all be forgiven if he made up for it elsewhere, but in every other aspect he turns out to be largely average. Stirling has all the ingredients needed to mature into a fine comedian but in ‘At Home’, his reliance upon weak and unoriginal jokes, coupled with a mediocre stage presence made for an underwhelming show.
