***
Comedy is all about timing and I think somebody got the timing seriously wrong with London-based Canadian Bobby Mair. This scruffy, potty-mouthed, debauched, dysfunctional storyteller should be lurching onstage at midnight when wolves are howling, not 7.40pm when the birds – OK, buskers – are still singing outside. Perhaps it was no surprise that of the nine people in the audience when I saw him one was me, one was his publicist and two were friends. The only thing sparser than his audience was his pathetically wispy "patchy hobo" beard. People ask if it is fake, he whined, before suggesting that nobody in their right minds would buy something like this from a store.
But putting facial topiary and scheduling issues aside, Mair, still only 27, certainly has something. In particular he has echoes of the same aura of unpredictability as Doug Stanhope, though without the scabrous satirical venom. The emphasis here is on the personal rather than the political, homing in on his chaotic Jagermeister-fuelled lifestyle, encounters with women and his drug habits: "I've done as much coke as I look like I have done," he chuckles as he pushes his scarecrow hair out of his bleary eyes.
Like a pre-rock and roll makeover Russell Brand Mair specialises in recounting escapades and lobbing in controversial philosophical nuggets. If you want to hear about midget drug dealers selling MDMA or what it is like to wake and discover someone is urinating on you this is your man. He – jokily, I hope – claims to be anti-abortion on the grounds that unwanted kids who grow up dysfunctional are probably his major demographic. This tone is part-stand-up, part-therapy, but without the analyst's fees.
While the show is called Obviously Adopted, Mair only gets onto the specific subject of his parentage towards the end. It has clearly left its mark on his psyche: "Adopting is like kidnapping, but at least with kidnapping they look for you." But in a way the whole hour is about his roots. Would he have been like this if his background had been more conventional? Maybe, but he certainly doubts it. Bizarrely he claims at one point that he has recently found out that Justin Bieber is his third cousin. Just when you think things can't be any worse you discover that. Life really has dealt Mair a tough hand.
Bobby Mair is at Soho Theatre from Oct 31 - Nov 2. Details here.
