Live Review: Dylan Moran in Glasgow

Live review:

Dylan Moran  - 'Like, totally...' tour - Glasgow May28th, Pavilion Theatre.

For an ever-drunk, chain-smoking Irishman with unbrushed hair, Dylan Moran is actually quite a sweetheart. Look past the grumbling, moaning, swearing, carping, grousing, frowning, sighing, grumbling and the fact that he's throwing cherries and chocolate raisins at his audience, and...you'll find a refreshingly warm, lovable family man who talks with deep (albeit twisted) affection about his wife and kids.

You take your children on exotic holidays, he says, so you can enrich their worldliness and impart knowledge to them - but by the second day, you're instead going up to the nearest local shouting "THIS IS SHIT! Your statues are shit! Where's the place with the toilets and the ice cream and stuff!", demanding that they speak your language.

Similar "everyday" observations are what propelled Peter Kay to fame, but the difference with Moran (apart from the fact that he's actually funny), is that he has this incredible ability to put really weird, bizarre notions into words..."The German language is like a typewriter eating tinfoil"

He voices your own thoughts in the most absurd fashion possible. He also spends five minutes attacking one woman in the crowd with his cherries, shouting "WHAT? IT'S ONLY FRUIT! IT WON'T HURT YOU!"

Being that he wrote and starred in the second best sitcom of all time (only "Father Ted" trumps "Black Books"), and his last stand-up DVD "Monster" is an almost unrivalled bout of comedy genius, tonight's Glasgow crowd has high expectations. Thankfully, Moran has us eating out of his hand in more ways than one - the fruit and choccie raisins are all well and good, but it's the jokes that count...

...and in arguing that Batman is a better role model than Jesus, doing an impression of a Catholic being wracked with shame and guilt for eating a biscuit, and observing that you can't discuss anything with a German without having "Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!" running through your mind, he more than does the job.

Moran's on fire tonight (well, not literally), and we're treated to a passionate, embittered and above all HILARIOUS set that's surely fuelled by the fact Moran can no longer smoke while performing...and with a man whose wit grows exponentially the grumpier he gets, the new ban is entirely welcome.

Graeme Johnston.