This is Russell Brand's moment in the sun - or the Sun, at any rate - and his one-week run in this 120-seat studio is the hottest ticket in comedy. The Essex-born dandy is now notorious as the redtop Romeo whose sexual conquests include (according to the Star) "celebrities, a host of prostitutes, pals and distant relatives". Before Big Brother's Big Mouth and dalliances with Kate Moss, Brand was one of the UK's most promising young stand-ups. Now he's back, to test whether C-list celebrity has blunted or sharpened his comedic edge.
Improbably, given his preening appearance and swaggering public profile, the show is about Brand's sense of shame. "My life," he says, "is a series of embarrassing incidents strung together by telling people about those embarrassing incidents." With self-deprecating charm, he recounts the time he camped it up around an airport carousel to ward off a mob of macho fellow passengers. And the dirty-talking sex session he sabotaged by blurting out his words of passion in an American accent.
The show will only bolster Brand's reputation as a sex addict. He shares his enthusiasm for deep-throat blowjobs and sticking his finger up his arse ("an internal Narnia!"). It's unexciting material, but Brand puts an energising spin on it. He deploys his gangly body to great effect, as when demonstrating how he shoos away his cat while masturbating. Amid the smut, there's a persuasive romanticism: "At the same time as being apes," says Brand of his greatest carnal moments, "we are truly angels an' all."
He's just as funny about celebrity, to which the second half of his set is devoted. Of course there's an air of narcissism to his routines about tabloid misrepresentation, or getting dissed in public by Bob Geldof. But Brand fashions vivid comedy from the flim-flam. I liked his impersonation of the addled Sean Ryder: "He's like a didgeridoo." And his deconstruction of the Star's article about his supposed spat with Tamara Beckwith is a tour de force of scorn. Dissecting the story word-by-overblown-word ("The big-haired pixie started his woo-a-thon..."), Brand heaps industrial quantities of ridicule on redtop culture and his own rampant, laddish pubic persona.
I look forward to the day when Brand directs his evident comic talent at subjects other than himself. But if comedy must be conducted at the level of Heat magazine, it's hard to imagine it more entertaining than this.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 0131-226 2428
