How good can standup be without being very distinctive? This good, I thought, watching, and enjoying, Ed Gamble’s new touring show. Skill for skill, you can’t fault the 38-year-old, who can write good jokes, deliver them expertly, course-correct with grace when things go wrong – and maintain a great rapport with his crowd throughout. Hot Diggity Dog is a tight 70 minutes of classic manchild comedy, recounting the travails of a newly married schmuck as he sustains “preventable middle-class injuries” in the kitchen and lurks on the neighbourhood WhatsApp, harvesting eccentric chat for comedy. All it lacks is what the best comedy needs – idiosyncrasy, some spark of irrefutable truth that might mark out Gamble as himself and no one else.
Is he hiding something, one wonders, by being, well, a bit generic – or was he born this way? Perhaps I should stop worrying and learn to love the well-honed set pieces – about his ill-advised honeymoon in Las Vegas, or his intense relationship with his new cat. There’s fun to be had with the former, as the Off Menu man practises his seven deadly sins on a lasagne, and regrets swallowing a marijuana sweetie (“Is there an antidote?”). There are anticlimaxes, too, like a section about a “drag brunch” that under-delivers on its big buildup.
In all these autobiographical tales, Gamble is the fall guy, never quite the grownup he wants to be. In most of them, he finds the angle, or adroit expression of dismay, to elevate that pose from familiar to freshly funny – such as when he compares his wife’s torture at the hands of a Thai masseuse to jetskiing, or starts quoting Lizzo lyrics to a vet who is fat-shaming his moggy.
Through it all, it’s conspicuous how many of the marks of a fine comedian Gamble hits – too conspicuous, perhaps. His show can feel like a brilliant technical exercise rather than something from the heart; some slickly assembled jokes and a lovable comic persona where individuality might be. But maybe we shouldn’t take brilliance for granted – and Hot Diggity Dog may be as good as comedy can be without being exceptional.
• At Hackney Empire, London, until 29 June. Then touring
