David Trent: Spontaneous Comedian ★★★

There’s much hype around David Trent’s technology-heavy debut show, which is the opposite of spontaneous, as he mocks in his opening gambit. A junior school teacher by day, Trent uses slickly edited video clips to help bring his routines to life, and has a bravado attitude similar to Nick Helm (funnily enough, Trent is in his backing band).

But underlying the nicely presented routines is material that’s lacking in originality. God’s Facebook page, Sigur Ros’s emotionally blackmailing music, embarrassing YouTube clips – it’s all been done before and Trent doesn’t have particularly fresh angles. He knows this, of course – his computer even tells him so: ‘You were shit before me’. There’s potential there, but ‘Spontaneous Comedian’ doesn’t quite live up to the hype.