Review: 1 Hour of Clean Comedy, Aces & Eights

1 Hour of Clean Comedy is an unusual promise to make in the crowded world of fringe theatre stand-up. I don’t know if host and headline act Callum Mackenzie chose this as a moral stance or a marketing tactic, but it works: during some deft opening crowd work, he established that several of the audience had been drawn by the title. What then followed proved that their instinct to come had been right.

Mackenzie is warm and engaging from the off, already interacting easily with his crowd as they arrive. Being so comfortable on stage puts an audience at ease. When he starts his act proper, calmly acknowledging that “6.30 on a Tuesday” might mean we are a tough crowd who have just come here because we’ve got nothing better to do, I have the feeling that most of us were already won over.

As well we should be. Much of Mackenzie’s comedy comes at his own expense, drawing laughs from the everyday frustrations and disappointments of his own life. These jokes are very skilfully set up so that we expect a different outcome until we start to understand the rhythm of his work and he lets us in on the joke. By the time he tells you about his masseuse, you know what’s coming, but you can’t quite believe he’s going there. Buildup and delivery work brilliantly.

He uses themes (puns, his mother) to signpost his way through the show effectively. Delivery is equally punchy. However, at times he moves on too quickly from some cracking punchlines – a line about the horse meat scandal and Lidl being the perfect example – when the show and its audience would benefit from giving such well-written material room to breathe.   Whilst this was my favourite gag in the show by far, I also wonder whether it is contemporary enough for such a young audience.

I also feel that his love of pun headlines, which were dashed off quickly in his final act, might be an effective running gag throughout.

He was joined briefly on stage by Jenny Jones, who delivered a short set that drew a more muted response from the audience, perhaps due to the direct contrast with Mackenzie. Where he exudes confidence, she seems not yet fully at ease in this role.

At the beginning of the show, he explained that this was a work in progress. Following his sold-out Edinburgh Fringe run in 2025, Mackenzie is taking his clean-comedy format back to the Edinburgh Fringe this August. Be like tonight’s audience and don’t let the clean comedy tag put you off; Mackenzie happily proves that you don’t need to be dirty to be dangerously funny.

Written by Jenny Jones and Callum Mackenzie

1 Hour of Clean Comedy has now completed its Camden Fringe run,
but the show transfers to the Edinburgh Fringe at Just the Tonic at The Hive.