Fringe: Comedy: The Johnny Vegas Show

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL 97

Comedy The Johnny Vegas Show

The pot of hype for Johnny Vegas is bubbling along nicely. The Perrier nomination announced yesterday will only turn the gas-mark up a couple of notches. For once, the act just about lives up to the hype. Vegas is a failed showbiz performer - like we need another one, I hear you cry - but is far more disturbing than the usual spangly-suited losers.

He rails against the injustices that life - and in particular the press - have heaped on him and picks on audience members with unsettling aggression. Only masochists should consider sitting in the front row.

The only constant in his troubled life has been his love of pottery. One of life's originals, Vegas demonstrates his talent in a strangely moving sequence which is surely the first time that throwing a pot has been the centrepiece of a comedy act.

Dark, difficult and dangerous, this is much, much more than a bizarre man/ potter's wheel two-hander.

At the Gilded Balloon, Venue38, 22.45 (0131-226 2151) to 30 Aug (excl 28)