Dressed like a hip hop stereotype and with an accent he describes as “Forrest Gump on crack”, LJ Da Funk is the brainchild of stand-up Zac Splijt. Shouting his way through an often surreal set, Splijt’s persona is sufficiently hilarious to make even the less-good jokes enjoyable.
His assuredly silly tone and light-hearted handling of some satirical material make Splijt an attractive prospect
Splijt’s character is refreshingly bizarre beside the Fringe’s more down-to-earth comedians, picking topics seemingly at random and leading up to some very odd punchlines. Part of the fun is listening to him declare “I went to Waitrose” gangster-style, and mangling the name of various English cheeses in the ludicrous accent. He’s clearly has the potential to be something of a cult act with his idiosyncratic delivery and expanding range of catchphrases, and is significantly different from a lot of stand-up at the Fringe.
The jokes occasionally come second to the comic persona. One of Da Funk’s favourite catchphrases is “my humour is best enjoyed retrospectively,” which tended to come after an obscure reference managed only a few laughs. Out of the jokes that didn’t soar over our heads, about half were inspired and the other half less so, but Da Funk’s delivery usually still got a laugh. At his best, the persona allows Splijt to get away with punchlines that are sometimes convoluted and sometimes outrageous, swapping the more anecdotal style favoured by a lot of stand-ups for surreal, bite-sized routines, often pitched a healthy distance away from reality.
Da Funk probably won’t appeal to everyone, and you do have to be in a certain frame of mind to fully appreciate a bellowing gangster parody. Nevertheless, his assuredly silly tone and light-hearted handling of some satirical material make Splijt an attractive prospect, and a welcome injection of weirdness into this Fringe’s comedy.
