Rhod Gilbert is the Welsh Tourist Board's official Voice of Wales. Which makes you wonder: what the hell is wrong with Wales? Gilbert's comedy shows are one-man hurricanes of fury, as he buckles under those daily frustrations the rest of us shrug off. "Don't clap," he says, "my life's falling to pieces here." Last year's show about a long night at Knutsford services was the best standup gig on the fringe. This year, he repeats that success – a bit too obviously – with an apoplectic account of the year he has had since.
It's very funny, so much so that one forgives the reuse of the 2008 formula. Last August, Gilbert performed a killer routine about tog ratings and shopping for a quilt. This time around, he is buying a vacuum cleaner and letting the concept of variable suction power get his goat. He goes on to the kooky blurb on the packaging of Innocent smoothies ("Who's their target audience? Bungle!?"), and to a blood-vessel-busting tirade about the lifesaving certificate he needlessly acquired as a schoolboy swimmer.
These jokes form part of an artfully constructed set that follows Gilbert's supposed abandonment by his mother, girlfriend and agent, his stint on the therapist's couch and a recent course in anger management. There's a danger that this caricaturing of his anger problem lessens its comic impact; he now exaggerates beyond credulity what last year was just about grounded in truth. But that is offset by some bulletproof one-liners, such as when he considers using the delay function on his washing machine, "in case shit stains come into fashion". If this is the voice of Wales, then Wales needs to sit down for a while in a darkened room.
