Just before the start of his set, a pre-recorded message by Bobby Mair warns 'everyone easily offended' to leave the premises immediately. For anyone who's left, 'welcome to my world.' What a world it is. Mair had a difficult upbringing - as the name of his act suggests, his biological parents left him at birth - and much of his act revolves around the relationships he's accrued since then, most of them bizarre. Whether it's the young cousin who wanted to know where he could pick up 'sixteen year-old girls' or the old friend who avoided paying a prostitute by fleeing through an open window, Mair's style of comedy is direct, conspiratorial and crude.
Mair's darker gags, moreover, are aided by the demeanour of the man himself. With his 'hobo beard', straggly hair and gangling presence, one could really get into Mair's slightly unhinged act. In the same way that Doug Stanhope (who Mair has worked with previously) can amuse and appal you in equal measure, many of Mair's more horrifying jokes were just too funny not to laugh at, even if you felt like you needed a long bath after having done so.
The flip-side is that, as Mair's act is not so much close to the bone as hacking through it with a chainsaw, when the audience's limits were reached, things fell a bit flat. A few of the jokes on the extreme end of Mair's spectrum were met with an awkward silence. Similarly, Mair occasionally appeared to push his psychotic persona to unnecessary limits, his jovial pronouncement 'you should see me when I'm drunk!' surely superfluous in an act wild enough already. These quibbles, however, are not enough to seriously dampen what is a good show and one that you should go and see if you get the chance, especially if you enjoy cringing for your laughs.
