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Chris Addison: Atomicity, Edinburgh Festival

By Ian Shuttleworth

Published: August 15 2005 03:00 | Last updated: August 15 2005 03:00

Although a world away from the character of the Pub Landlord, comedian Chris Addison is in danger of following in Al Murray's footsteps as a repeated Perrier award nominee who is incomprehensibly always overlooked for the prize itself.

Addison is probably the country's prime exponent of the too-clever-by-half school of comedy. Where, say, Stewart Lee uses his impressive intellect to batter ideas into submission by interrogating them on their own terms, Addison gives them a quarter-twist anti-clockwise and bumps them against each other to see if they strike sparks. In his hands, they always do.

Atomicity is nominally a show about the periodic table of the elements, but where too many Fringe shows chain themselves to their high concept, Addison simply sticks a few assorted objects (an illuminated globe, a periodic table mug, a big DNA double helix) on a table, shows a few captions in placards on an easel and largely continues riffing in his usual way.

And what a way it is. There's a standard comic technique of topping your own punchline, adding a further gag a couple of seconds along to prolong and intensify the laugh. Addison regularly tops his gags four, five, six times over. It could be immensely annoying, except that it's entirely natural to his ebulliently inquiring mind and each successive gag is always genuinely funny. He twits us about the time it takes us to get the joke about "the Bronze Age: the third best Age we've ever had", and at one point simply shouts out in delighted wonder: "This is my job!" He seems to get a lot of job satisfaction; he certainly gives it.