Time: 11.35pm
Capacity: 70ish seats, with 40ish bums in them.
The theme: A lecture entitled the "Totally Spot-on History of British Industry", for which goth-boy O'Neill has tied back his metre of hair and strapped himself into a waistcoat and tie. If you know little about the origins of the Industrial Revolution and the men who made Britain great, then these tales of Coal Henge and Brunel's mechanical nanny will leave you sadly misinformed.
High point: Probably the best actual jokes I have heard on the fringe so far this year. Even O'Neill's simple lists, of deleted technical terms at the beginning of the show and, later, alternative names for coal, were enough to have me and the people next to me helplessly moist-eyed with laughter. His inventive skill with language really is at times on a par with the best of Peep Show or The Day Today.
Weak spot: The second half. Once O'Neill leaves all the whiskered gentlemen behind and sets to work on the 20th century, a few of his surreal conceits go for awfully long wanders between laughs. For example, he mimes and dances to Level 42 for some time wearing a challenging stare and a fixedly ironic grin that surely does no one any good. And the one-gag final section about James Dyson's megalomaniac machines just, well, isn't all that funny. At such moments O'Neill can start, just ever so slightly, to feel a little defensive and less fun to be around.
Audience participation: What this late-night crowd may have lacked in numbers, it certainly made up for in rowdiness. My third of the room had to shout "Fuck yeah!" each time we heard the word "loom", and did it with more drunken gusto than O'Neill seemed to be expecting.
Comic equation: Andy Zaltzman + (Chris Morris/Rob Newman)
Mark out of 10: 7
Put this on your poster: If you're interested in engineering, you'll still enjoy this show.
