Although over the years Sheila and I have seen a lot of different comics, both together and separately, generally we have ‘discovered’ them individually and I suppose I have been more active in this field than she has. So it was good to see that one of her discoveries, New Zealand born Al Pitcher, was on tour and visiting our favourite venue Edinburgh’s Stand Comedy Club.

Although a Tuesday night in late February The Stand was packed to the rafters to see Pitcher, and his opening act Edinburgh based Graeme Thomas and by showtime the club was buzzing.

Pitcher himself introduced the concept of the show, unusual for the star act to be the warm up for the warm up, but hey, whatever and then Thomas hit the stage. We have seen him a couple times over recent months and I must admit he is a comic I have always enjoyed seeing. Graeme is widely travelled and well educated also pretty erudite with his topics. Some of his material is now a little familiar to us, but for many of the crowd it was brand new and I enjoyed seeing their reaction to it and him as a whole. I think it was an undoubted hit on both counts and I look forward to seeing more of him in the near future.

Following a slightly longer than normal interval partly due to technical gremlins, our star turn took to the stage with his novel, if somewhat scary I’d have thought, premise for his show. The concept is that he arrives in what ever town he is playing, armed with his digital camera, and spends the next few hours wondering around taking pictures, downloading them onto his laptop and then kicking in with his own improvised comedic ability, makes an hours entertainment based on these pictures he projects onto a large screen.

Pitcher is not an aggressive, in-your-face comedian as some are, he is however a keen observer of life and has abundance of personality and wit to keep his audience enthralled for the hour. Looking at ‘other peoples pictures’ is not usually my favourite way of passing the time but the hour sped by with me wanting to see more and more, as I’m sure most would concur. Most, it was a pity about the two …. Let’s call them ‘gentlemen’ who were determined to disrupt proceedings as much as possible. Unfortunately they eventually got to Pitcher a little, and under sufferance got nearer to loosing his temper than he liked. I would just have liked to see these guys try the some stunts with someone like Brendan Burns in his dark period, maybe then they’d learn their lesson.

Still this sort of behaviour is unlikely to occur too often so take my advice, if this clever, intelligent and funny gent comes your way, then grab your ticket with both hands and don’t let it go. You would not want too miss out.