Alan Carr: I Love Alan Carr, Pleasance Courtyard

Alan Carr, superstar? Maybe not just yet, but this cheeky, geeky Northern (he hails from Northampton but lives in Manchester) comedian may yet find love in the hearts of the British public. Sporting glasses of which Eric Morecambe would have been proud, Carr befriends his audience with the air of a gossipy washerwoman with killer punchlines (for instance, on how the war in Iraq has affected his TV career: "I can't help thinking that if Basra had fallen earlier, I'd be a big star by now"; and: "How bad can a date be when you spike your own drink with Rohypnol?").

Carr rides over familiar ground - young mothers; supermarkets; the RAC; the south-west of England (or Middle-earth, as he calls it) - but he spins these clichés away from comedy culs-de-sac and roundabout double entendre. Fiddling with his ear and looking furtive at times, Carr is almost apologetic about his laughs - when he nears the knuckle, he exclaims: "I know that joke is wrong, but that's the only way I can describe it!" In a link-up with Jason Wood's show, his fellow comic steals the show for a while, and our host loses some momentum. Otherwise, I Love Alan Carr is turbocharged.