Imran Yusuf came to Edinburgh under the radar this year to rehearse for a tilt at the big time in 2011. Instead, he's ended up a best newcomer nominee, playing to packed houses (well, cellars) on the free fringe. His success is deserved, even if this gangly, cheeky cockney is far from the finished article.
This set is notable for Yusuf's eagerness to address big subjects (religion and atheism, his British Muslim identity), even if he's short on novel things to say about them. He sets out his stall early, relating how, when he went to school in New Jersey, he was teased for his Englishness. "This is a form of prejudice," he announces, with amusing decorousness, "I had not experienced before."
Hence his conflicted British patriotism. When he hears Americans taunt Brits about 1776, he is drawn to support "my white people". But he won't swear loyalty to the Queen because the last time a Muslim got involved with royalty, it ended in "a very suspicious car accident".
This is good stuff – serious subjects handled with a light touch. But there are sententious passages where Yusuf swaps funny for earnest. And his conclusions – about us all being equal, and "let's build bridges" – are a little bland. Elsewhere, he's too reliant on cliches: girlfriends obscuring the screen when Match of the Day is on, Britishness denoted by the urge to apologise, and so on.
Far better when he cuts loose from hokey consensus-building and explores his experience as a practising (but sometimes wavering) Muslim negotiating modern Britain. His lapses, for comic effect, into an Indian accent ("business is business"), or even his jokes about Polish immigrants ("I can get away with this!"), hint at how rich comedy can be when one man's competing identities jostle simultaneously for the mic.
