Roisin Conaty: Destiny's Dickhead, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh

Julian Hall
Tuesday 09 August 2011 00:00 BST
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Highly personable: Roisin Conaty
Highly personable: Roisin Conaty

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It's brisk business as usual for the winner of the 2010 Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Best Newcomer award. Roisin Conaty picks up the relentless pace where she left off, and if anything she is a little too quick for her own good, finishing her show at around the 45-minute mark. "I've no sense of direction, which makes it hard to storm off in an argument," she says. Maybe she should add a sense of timing to that.

It's a shame because Conaty, 32, is highly personable and brimming with good ideas. She picks up on the stresses and aggravations of life and exposes home truths about our rush to be happy. One example is a depiction of relaxed holiday-makers whose mood changes when they hear of free internet access elsewhere.

Conaty's frustrations are legion – she has no time for fussy yoga teachers or the refined nature of modern hen weekend wheezes that seem contrary to the goal of letting off steam: "I did pottery, landscape drawing and canoeing, all of which I could have done as a young offender."

While Conaty is ever-streetwise, she has dropped the street catchphrases that once punctuated her punchlines. By and large that is a good thing, but she would do well to remember that punctuation of the pacing kind is not optional.

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