"Comedy is counselling," says John Bishop, and his new show could be hardly be more confessional if it took place on a therapist's couch. It tells the tale of Liverpudlian father-of-three Bishop's journey from sales director of a pharmaceuticals company, via marital break-up, to a new career in stand-up comedy. The title, Stick Your Job Up Your Arse, implies a triumphalism entirely lacking from Bishop's account, which is emotionally honest about the anxieties he felt before finally quitting corporate life to become a full-time joker in November last year.
I wasn't instantly seduced by the story, which starts with Bishop describing the globetrotting lifestyle to which (he protests) this working-class Scouse-made-good never quite became accustomed. He embroiders with a lazy knob gag his otherwise innocuous tale of meeting the golfer Colin Montgomerie, in his pyjamas, in the first-class cabin of an aeroplane. But slowly, unshowily, Bishop's set becomes less laddish and more frank about the pain of being middle-aged and stuck in a life you didn't choose. Bishop's relationship collapses, he sees his kids only at weekends, and performs his first, cathartic comedy gig mainly as a way of plugging the gap. "Not all of it was funny," he says, "especially the bits where I was crying."
By contrast, this show has some solid laughs. When Bishop and his wife finally make up, they sell their respective houses and buy a bigger one. "So when you're crying at night," he tells his confused sons, "think of the equity." But not all of this set is funny - and that's partly the point. "I'm not from the generation that took chances," says Bishop of his low-horizoned background. But, inspired by the two-wheeled contraption that allows his crippled German shepherd to walk again (as one tear-jerking home video demonstrates), he takes a chance in the end. This show suggests the risk is paying off.
· Until August 27. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
