Longley quickly explains the plan for his show, that he calls A Joke is Just A Joke. He also explains his ability to self-sabotage gigs.
He talks about his love of jokes, words, and even puns, telling us silly, childish jokes to demonstrate. Then through doing comedy, he discovered jokes could be opinions, emotions, or make a difference. He strikes out at bad thinking in the world, with examples of how this can justify drink driving. He attacks OCD sufferers as control freaks, and autism as just being a good memory.
He offers his show flyer, and discusses having two totally different quotes from the same source. He debates procreation, unfaithfulness, and the relative numbers of lies told by each gender, and how all this affects relationships. He attempts to get shocking about trying anal sex, and making claims about his mums sex life.
Politics sneak in, with the pressure on women over body shape, and the lack of a sisterhood. He attacks psychics preying on the vulnerable, Christianity for the Gods watching thing, and Scientology as well as the Germans banning it.
He explains placebos, and suggests scientific tests for his headache cure punching a baby in the face. He attacks lazy news presenters, and journalists. He then explains his Liverpool gig where he got into trouble for a Rhys Thomas / Maddie McGann gag.
The press escalation involved hate e-mails, his home town asking what it meant for them, and a big deal being made from his 2008 Edinburgh shows, retrospectively.
While consistently funny, the whole thing gets a bit self-indulgent and poor-me at times. Comic says something offensive and upsets people. Big wow.
But there are plenty of laughs here, some of which arent sympathy-pleas, attempts to shock, or bids to be political. Some, thankfully, are nothing other than good old straightforward jokes.
