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Imran Yusuf: Bring The Thunder, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh

Julian Hall
Wednesday 17 August 2011 00:00 BST
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Having been nominated for the Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Best Newcomer Award last year, confident geezer (or "gangsta") Imran Yusuf is back to preen and provoke. Enough vulnerability comes through Yusuf's persona to avoid him coming over as cocky; constantly putting forward his ego, he takes it back with a self-deprecating reveal.

"A Peperami in a suit" and "a mix between Malcolm X and Mahatma Ghandi" is how the young comic describes himself, as he extols "passive non-violent protest by any means necessary". His main messages are to do with rejection. On a personal level, he asks women to use their power of rejection carefully. On a political level, he rejects David Cameron's assertion that multiculturalism has failed.

To avoid heartbreak on either level, he shows the ladies what a swell guy he is while telling the politicians that if a Mombassa-born Hackney boy raised by Muslim parents of Indian descent can become a stand-up and crack a double-edged joke about it – "My mum didn't know, because my dad didn't let her out of the house" – then multiculturalism isn't such a failure after all.

To 28 August (0131 556 6550)

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