EDINBURGH FESTIVAL 2009: Lloyd Langford - EVERY DAY I HAVE THE BLUES, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 8 August 2009

As his last year’s Edinburgh show title identified, Lloyd Langford is neither a lover nor a fighter. What he is is an affable Welshman, striving to do the right thing even if that means occasionally taking magic mushrooms (to stop his friends from having too much). He’s also a huge fan of blues music, which is the direction his 2009 show, Every Day I Have The Blues, seems to be heading. He starts the show with some rock-solid material about blues musicians and their names and the musical heritage of Liverpool. Halfway though, however, a raft of latecomers enter and, though he joshes with them, it knocks him out of his flow a bit.

It doesn’t help either that the room – in the Pleasance Courtyard – resembles an oven. This heat might be why the crowd isn’t laughing much. Or it might just be that the likeable chap just isn’t the sort to inspire belly laughs. His material is good and his stage manner is charming but he is so amiable that perhaps we just feel comfortable smiling along with him.

Once the blues music riff is over, he’s straight into a standard comedy routine. Skits about having big feet, queue jumpers and being squeamish are all good stuff but right at the end he seems to remember that at Edinburgh You’re Supposed To Have A Theme (hey, Lloyd…it’s ok, you don’t have to...) and hastily cobbles together a “manifesto” based on what we’ve heard. There is no need for this and all it serves to do is remind us that most of what we’ve heard was nothing to do with the blues and what we’re left with is a decent 40 minutes of good comedy ruined by the confines of the Fringe structure.

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