"I am standup's Susan Boyle," says Paul Sinha, whose new show laments the fact that he hasn't been in a relationship since 1991. For years, while he worked as a GP, that wasn't a problem; a large group of friends papered over the chronic singledom. But since Sinha became a full-time standup and relinquished his right to a social life, solitude has started to smart.
If.comedy-nominated in 2006, Sinha's reputation is for confessional and uncommonly thoughtful comedy, delivered at an upbeat pace (and with a high joke count) that offsets self-indulgence. The emotional frankness is in place here, as he asks: "When did I become the kind of person that young people look at and take the piss?" Yes, we're in familiar mid-life crisis territory, but it looks different from Sinha's perspective. Behind him, he sees a relationship wasteland stretching back to a disastrous trip to the film Mermaids with his last boyfriend, Steve. Ahead, he sees fulfilment in general knowledge: Sinha was recently ranked the 60th-best quizzer in the UK.
That sounds nerdy, but to Sinha, quiz proficiency is a route back to self-esteem. "Having all the answers is empowering," he says, then tells a story in which his total recall of the career of broadcaster Clare Balding averted a kicking on a late-night train. There and elsewhere, a strong impression is made of a sensitive man navigating the shallows of 21st-century Britain. Performing to an office-party crowd who "were looking for Chubby Brown, not chubby and brown"; submitting a lonely hearts ad and receiving in reply 38 photographs of cocks – if this is a true slice of Sinha's life, no wonder he's lonely. Keep the standup standard this high, though, and more and more people will want to spend time with him.
