Coming on the the strains of the Steve Miller Band's 'The Joker', Jason John Whitehead confesses that only a few day's into his run, it's already beginning to piss him off. He chose 'The Joker' as the title of his show, intending it to be a look back at the ten years of his comedy career, seeing how he had changed over that time.
Arriving in Edinburgh as a Canadian backpacker in the nineties, he describes his thirst to do stand up as a means of getting out of the 9-to-5 rat race world, and talks us through how he went from having minimalist approach to possessions (well you can't get that much stuff into a back-pack anyway), to now owning a 56 telly and a car.
Covering tales of his rat race job doing dolphin tours for tourists (yeah, right!), he has some great lines about why dolphins are not necessarily universally loved - at least not by him. Talking openly about what an asshole I was ten years ago, gives him a great opportunity for stories of his drug and alcohol fuelled nonsenses, and how he's developed since into having an addiction for dried fruit.
Woven all the way through with some sharp comedy about his family, he manages a nice take on racism as he tells us about his Korean wife and in-laws, as well as why he thinks that British women are much sluttier (in a nice way, you understand) than their North American counterparts.
This guy had total command of the room, and his audience loved the laid-back observational and confessional humour grab a ticket before he sells out.
