Andy Zaltzman has such an English manner that watching his show is like being hard-wired to Radio 4. He is intelligent but not at all passionate. With his shock of hair curling over his domed forehead, he looks mildly eccentric. His show is easy to like, difficult to love. His Afghanistan material is delivered not a degree more heatedly than his jokes about the Inland Revenue. It all comes out as a stream of nonchalant wit, pitched in the increasingly maddening tones of a young Barry Norman.
And why not? After all, Zaltzman's chirpy urbanity makes for a perfectly pleasant hour of comedy. The show's tenuous theme is truth-telling; Zaltzman purports to be creating a Catapult of Truth that will force the world to confront its culture of mendacity. If that makes it sound as if he feels strongly on this point, he doesn't show it.
There is some splendid material here: I particularly enjoyed World Leaders Top Trumps, by which means Zaltzman draws impudent parallels between Hitler and the Queen, Bush and Bin Laden. But there's also duff stuff, including the interminable nonsense anecdote with which he concludes the show. The staging could be more dynamic, too. The Catapult of Truth motif peters out with a limp piece of physical interplay between Zaltzman and a co-star with an inflatable Planet Earth on his head. Zaltzman teases the mind, but never quickens the heartbeat.
· Until August 26. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
