Emo Philips is a peculiar man. Between jokes he wheezes and contorts like an asthmatic stork, sheds his various layers (silk yellow robe, jacket, waistcoat), stuffing them in his clownish pockets and tugging them all out again, and carries himself like the sort of man you wouldn't be surprised to see lurking in the bushes of a metropolitan park.Emo Philips is unique (not 'very unique', as the semantic pedant in him is quick to assert), but more exceptional than the wilfully eccentric, childlike persona is the quality of his jokes. A paedophile analogy he uses to dismiss the worth of non-alcoholic beer is quite wonderful. Despite the infantile slowness of his delivery, the themes of the show are weighty and pertinent: religious fundamentalism, politics (he laments his hasty promise only to return to Edinburgh the day the USA elect a black President), marriage and greetings cards, and handled with incisive irreverence.Indeed, this is a razor-sharp routine, Philips' first in Edinburgh for nine years, and his interaction with the audience (excepting the slightly dubious exchanges with 'nice young ladies') suggests there's life in the old devil yet. But he is an acquired taste, and about half an hour in I was so exhausted from the nervy, wheezing persona that the show becomes less about the (almost peerlessly good) one-liners than the neurotic overlay. A fascinating set, but an oddly gruelling one.