Denis Leary

Bill Hicks once said of Denis Leary that "he is the Donovan to my Dylan" but due to the vagaries of the celeb system, it is Leary, not Hicks, who is perceived as the king of "righteous anger/expletive strewn/come and have a go if you think you're hard enough" comedy.

It is desperately unfair to expect Leary to live up to the genius of Hicks - and he doesn't - but he really could have done better than he did here in a show that never got out of the first few gears.

He opened with some sardonically-cutting material on Michael Flatley (who has it coming to him) and The Spice Girls, setting out his stall for the night as he picked on audience-friendly targets. But there was no real depth to any of the material here and beyond the swear words just lay another set of swear words.

The same problem blighted his extended set on his desire for retro fashions in terms of beer and cigarettes - while steadily railing against modern sensibilities and at times really hitting home with some sharp observations, he never elevated the material to another level and a predictability developed about how he would treat each successive topic.

His material on domestic matters - an extended flick through his family album - was resonant and sturdy, apart from the sandwich in the video recorder line which is almost as old as the man himself and offered a way out of the morass but again he never really worked it into anything more than an amusing vignette.

It was strange to see him using material from his last major show, No Cure For Can- cer, when he has written a brand new show but then he knows a thing or two about how to work an audience.

Leary has done some outstanding work in the past, let's hope he works this show into shape or comes back with something stronger next time.

Now more than ever, we need to hear his voice - more malice, less tweeness please.